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THE WRITINGS OF 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

IN THIRTEEN VOLUMES 
VOLUME IV. 



OVER THE TEACUPS 



BY 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

M 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

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BOHmiiASl'EEl^ 



Copyright, 1890 and 1891, 
BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 

All rights reserved. 






The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 



TBANSPBB 
&, O e PUBLIC LIBRAS? 



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771500 




The Teapot represented above seems entitled to 
special mention. Its inscription shows it to be the 
gift of pupils to their Instructor, in the year 1738. 
The pupils were students of Harvard College ; the 
Instructor was Henry Flynt, Fellow and Tutor from 
1699 to 1754. The three nodules of flint on the 
escutcheon belong to what are called in heraldry 
u canting arms." 

Henry Flynt was a bachelor. The Teapot passed by 
descent to his niece Dorothy (Quincy) Jackson, from 
her to her daughter Mary (Jackson) Wendell, then 
to her daughter Sarah (Wendell) Holmes, and from 
her to her son, the present owner, 

O. W. H. 



PREFACE. 



The kind way in which this series of papers has 
been received has been a pleasure greater than I 
dared to anticipate. I felt that I was a late comer in 
the midst of a crowd of ardent and eager candidates 
for public attention, that I had already had my day, 
and that if, like the unfortunate Frenchman we used 
to read about, I had " come again," I ought not to 
be surprised if I received the welcome of " Monsieur 
Tonson." 

It has not proved so. My old readers have come 
forward in the pleasantest possible way and assured 
me that they were glad to see me again. There is no 
need, therefore, of apologies or explanations. I thought 
I had something left to say and I have found listeners. 
In writing these papers I have had occupation and 
kept myself in relation with my fellow-beings. New 
sympathies, new sources of encouragement, if not of 
inspiration, have opened themselves before me and 
cheated the least promising season of life of much 
that seemed to render it dreary and depressing. What 
has particularly pleased me has been the freedom of 
the criticisms which I have seen from disadvantageous 
comparisons of my later with my earlier writings. 

I should like a little rest from literary work before 
the requiescat ensures my repose from earthly labors, 



li PREFACE. 

but I will not be rash enough to promise that I will 
not even once again greet my old and new readers if 
the impulse becomes irresistible to renew a compan- 
ionship which has been to me such a source of hap- 
piness. 

0. W. H. 

Beverly Farms, Mass., August, 1891. 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 



INTRODUCTION. 

This series of papers was begun in March, 1888. 
A single number was printed, when it was interrupted 
by the course of events, and not resumed until nearly 
two years later, in January, 1890. The plan of the 
series was not formed in my mind when I wrote the 
first number. In returning to my task I found that 
my original plan had shaped itself in the underground 
laboratory of my thought so that some changes had 
to be made in what I had written. As I proceeded, 
the slight story which formed a part of my programme 
developed itself without any need of much contrivance 
on my part. Given certain characters in a writer's 
conception, if they are real to him, as they ought to 
be, they will act in such or such a way, according to 
the law of their nature. It was pretty safe to assume 
that intimate relations would spring up between some 
members of our mixed company ; and it was not rash 
to conjecture that some of these intimacies might end 
in such attachment as would furnish us hints, at least, 
of a love-story. 

As to the course of the conversations which would 
take place, very little could be guessed beforehand* 



6 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

Various subjects of interest would be likely to present 
them selves, without definite order, oftentimes abruptly 
and, as it would seem, capriciously. Conversation in 
such a mixed company as that of " The Teacups " is 
likely to be suggestive rather than exhaustive. Con- 
tinuous discourse is better adapted to the lecture-room 
than to the tea-table. There is quite enough of it, — 
I fear too much, — in these pages. But the reader 
must take the reports of our talks as they were jotted 
down. A patchwork quilt is not like a piece of Gobe- 
lin tapestry ; but it has its place and its use. 

Some will feel a temptation to compare these con- 
versations with those earlier ones, and remark unami- 
ably upon their difference. This is hardly fair, and 
is certainly not wise. They are produced under very 
different conditions, and betray that fact in every line. 
It is better to take them by themselves ; and, if my 
reader finds anything to please or profit from, I shall 
be contented, and he, I feel sure, will not be ungrate- 
ful. 

The readers who take up this volume may recollect 
a series of conversations held many years ago over the 
breakfast-table, and reported for their more or less 
profitable entertainment. Those were not very early 
breakfasts at which the talks took place, but at any 
rate the sun was rising, and the guests had not as yet 
tired themselves with the labors of the day. The 
morning cup of coffee has an exhilaration about it 
which the cheering influence of the afternoon or even- 
ing cup of tea cannot be expected to reproduce. The 
toils of the forenoon, the heats of midday, in the warm 
season, the slanting light of the descending sun, or 
the sobered translucency of twilight have subdued the 






OVER THE TEACUPS. 7 

vivacity of the early day. Yet under the influence of 
the benign stimulant many trains of thought which 
will bear recalling, may suggest themselves to some of 
our quiet circle and prove not uninteresting to a cer- 
tain number of readers. 

How early many of my old breakfast companions 
went off to bed ! I am thinking not merely of those 
who sat round our table, but of that larger company 
of friends who listened to our conversations as re- 
ported. Dear girl with the silken ringlets, dear boy 
with the down-shadowed cheek, your grandfather, 
your grandmother, turned over the freshly printed 
leaves that told the story of those earlier meetings 
around the plain board where so many things were 
said and sung, not all of which have quite faded from 
the memory of this overburdened and forgetful time. 
Your father, your mother, found the scattered leaves 
gathered in a volume, and smiled upon them as not 
uncompanionable acquaintances. My tea-table makes 
no promises. There is no programme of exercises to 
be studied beforehand. What if I should content 
myself with a single report of what was said and done 
over our teacups ? Perhaps my young reader would 
be glad to let me off, for there are talkers enough 
who have not yet left their breakfast-tables ; and no- 
body can blame the young people for preferring the 
thoughts and the language of their own generation, 
with all its future before it, to those of their grand- 
fathers' contemporaries. 

My reader, young or old, will please to observe that 
I have left myself entire freedom as to the sources of 
what may be said over the teacups. I have not told 
how many cups are commonly on the board, but by 
using the plural I have implied that there is at least 



8 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

one other talker or listener beside myself, and for all 
that appears there may be a dozen. There will be no 
regulation length to my reports, — no attempt to 
make out a certain number of pages. I have no con- 
tract to fill so many columns, no pledge to contribute 
so many numbers. I can stop on this first page if I 
do not care to say anything more, and let this article 
stand by itself if so minded. What a sense of free- \ 
dom it gives not to write by the yard or the column ! 

When one writes for an English review or maga- 
zine at so many guineas a sheet, the temptation is very 
great to make one's contribution cover as many sheets 
as possible. We all know the metallic taste of arti- 
cles written under this powerful stimulus. If Bacon's 
Essays had been furnished by a modern hand to the 
" Quarterly Review " at fifty guineas a sheet, what a 
great book it would have taken to hold them ! 

The first thing which suggests itself to me, as I con- 
template my slight project, is the liability of repeating 
in the evening what I may have said in the morning 
in one form or another, and printed in these or other 
pages. When it suddenly flashes into the conscious- 
ness of a writer who has been long before the public, 
" Why, I have said all that once or oftener in my 
books or essays, and here it is again, the same old 
thought, the same old image, the same old story ! " it 
irritates him, and is likely to stir up the monosyllables 
of his unsanctified vocabulary. He sees in imagina- 
tion a thousand readers, smiling or yawning as they 
say to themselves, " We have had all that before," 
and turn to another writer's performance for some- 
thing not quite so stale and superfluous. This is what 
the writer says to himself about the reader. 

The idiot ! Does the simpleton really think that 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 9 

everybody has read all lie has written ? Does he 
really believe that everybody remembers all of his, 
the writers, words he may happen to have read ? At 
one of those famous dinners of the Phi Beta Kappa 
Society, where no reporter was ever admitted, and 
from which nothing ever leaks out about what is said 
and done, Mr. Edward Everett, in his after-dinner 
speech, quoted these lines from the iEneid, giving a 
very liberal English version of them, which he applied 
to the Oration just delivered by Mr. Emerson : — 

Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosse 
Addiderant, rutili tres ignis, et alitis Austri. 

His nephew, the ingenious, inventive, and inexhausti- 
ble Dr. Edward Everett Hale, tells the story of this 
quotation, and of the various uses to which it might 
be applied in after-dinner speeches. How often he 
ventured to repeat it at the Phi Beta Kappa dinners 
I am not sure ; but as he reproduced it with his lively 
embellishments and fresh versions and artful circum- 
locutions, not one person in ten remembered that he 
had listened to those same words in those same ac- 
cents only a twelvemonth ago. The poor deluded 
creatures who take it for granted that all the world 
remembers what they have said, and laugh at them 
when they say it over again, may profit by this recol- 
lection. But what if one does say the same things, — - 
of course in a little different form each time, — over 
and over ? If he has anything to say worth saying, 
that is just what he ought to do. Whether he ought 
to or not, it is very certain that this is what all who 
write much or speak much necessarily must and will 
do. Think of the clergyman who preaches fifty or a 
hundred or more sermons every year for fifty years ! 
Think of the stump speaker who shouts before a hun- 



10 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

dred audiences during the same political campaign, 
always using the same arguments, illustrations, and 
catchwords ! Think of the editor, as Carlyle has pic- 
tured him, threshing the same straw every morning, 
until we know what is coming when we see the first 
line, as we do when we read the large capitals at the 
head of a thrilling story, which ends in an advertise- 
ment of an all-cleansing soap or an all-curing remedy ! 

The latch-key which opens into the inner chambers 
of my consciousness fits, as I have sufficient reason to 
believe, the private apartments of a good many other 
people's thoughts. The longer we live, the more we 
find we are like other persons. When I meet with 
any facts in my own mental experience, I feel almost 
sure that I shall find them repeated or anticipated in 
the writings or the conversation of others. This feel- 
ing gives one a freedom in telling his own personal 
history he could not have enjoyed without it. My 
story belongs to you as much as to me. De tefabula 
narratur. Change the personal pronoun, — that is 
all. It gives many readers a singular pleasure to find 
a writer telling them something they have long known 
or felt, but which they have never before found any 
one to put in words for them. An author does not 
always know when he is doing the service of the angel 
who stirred the waters of the pool of Bethesda. Many 
a reader is delighted to find his solitary thought has a 
companion, and is grateful to the benefactor who has 
strengthened him. This is the advantage of the hum- 
ble reader over the ambitious and self-worshipping 
writer. It is not with him pereant illi, but beati sunt 
illi qui pro nobis nostra dixerunt, — Blessed are those 
who have said our good things for us. 

What I have been saying of repetitions leads me 






OVER THE TEACUPS. 11 

into a train of reflections like which I think many 
readers will find something in their own mental his- 
tory. The area of consciousness is covered by layers 
of habitual thoughts, as a sea-beach is covered with 
wave-worn, rounded pebbles, shaped, smoothed, and 
polished by long attrition against each other. These 
thoughts remain very much the same from day to day 9 
even from week to week ; and as we grow older, f rojoa 
month to month, and from year to year. The tides of 
wakening consciousness roll in upon them daily as we 
unclose our eyelids, and keep up the gentle movement 
and murmur of ordinary mental respiration until we 
close them again in slumber. When we think we are 
thinking, we are for the most part only listening to 
the sound of attrition between these inert elements of 
our intelligence. They shift their places a little, they 
change their relations to each other, they roll over and 
turn up new surfaces. Now and then a new fragment 
is cast in among them, to be worn and rounded and 
take its place with the others, but the pebbled floor of 
consciousness is almost as stationary as the pavement 
of a city thoroughfare. 

It so happens that at this particular time I have 
something to tell which I am quite sure is not one of 
the rolled pebbles which my reader has seen before in 
any of my pages, or, as I feel confident, in those of 
any other writer. 

If my reader asks why I do not send the statement 
I am going to make to some one of the special peri= 
odicals that deal with such subjects, my answer is, 
that I like to tell my own stories at my own time, in 
my own chosen columns, where they will be read by a 
class of readers with whom I like to talk. 

All men of letters or of science, all writers well 



12 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

known to the public, are constantly tampered with, in 
these days, by a class of predaceous and hungry fel- 
low-laborers who may be collectively spoken of as the 
brain-tappers. They want an author's ideas on the 
subjects which interest them, the inquirers, from the 
gravest religious and moral questions to the most 
trivial matters of his habits and his whims and fan- 
cies. Some of their questions he cannot answer; 
some he does not choose to answer ; some he is not yet 
ready to answer, and when he is ready he prefers to 
select his own organ of publication. I do not find 
fault with all the brain-tappers. Some of them are 
doing excellent service by accumulating facts which 
could not otherwise be attained. But one gets tired 
of the strings of questions sent him, to which he is 
expected to return an answer, plucked, ripe or un- 
ripe, from his private tree of knowledge. The brain- 
tappers are like the owner of the goose that laid the 
golden eggs. They would have the embryos and 
germs of one's thoughts out of the mental oviducts, 
and cannot wait for their spontaneous evolution and 
extrusion. 

The story I have promised is, on the whole, the 
most remarkable of a series which I may have told in 
part at some previous date, but which, if I have not 
told, may be worth recalling at a future time. 

Some few of my readers may remember that in a 
former paper I suggested the possibility of the ex- 
istence of an idiotic area in the human mind, corre- 
sponding to the blind spot in the human retina. I 
trust that I shall not be thought to have let my wits 
go wandering in that region of my own intellectual 
domain, when I relate a singular coincidence which 
very lately occurred in my experience, and add a few 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 13 

remarks made by one of our company on the delicate 
and difficult but fascinating subject which it forces 
upon our attention. I will first copy the memorandum 
made at the time : — 

" Remarkable coincidence. On Monday, April 18th, 

being at table from 6.30 p. m. to 7.30, with -and 

[the two ladies of my household], I told them of 

the case of i trial by battel ' offered by Abraham 
Thornton in 1817. I mentioned his throwing down 
his glove, which was not taken up by the brother of 
his victim, and so he had to be let off, for the old law 
was still in force. I mentioned that Abraham Thorn- 
ton was said to have come to this country, ' and [I 
added] he may be living near us, for aught that I 
know.' I rose from the table, and found an English 
letter waiting for me, left while I sat at dinner. I 
copy the first portion of this letter : — 

1 20 AxntED Place, West (near Museum^ 
South Kensington, London, S. W. 
April 7, 1887. 

Dr. O. W. Holmes : 

Dear Sir, — In travelling, the other day, I met 
with a reprint of the very interesting case of Thorn- 
ton for murder, 1817. The prisoner pleaded success- 
fully the old Wager of Battel. I thought you would 
like to read the account, and send it with this. . . 
Yours faithfully, 

Fred. Kathbone.' " 

Mr. Eathbone is a well-known dealer in old Wedg- 
wood and eighteenth-century art. As a friend of my 
hospitable entertainer, Mr. Willett, he had shown me 
many attentions in England, but I was not expecting 
any communication from him ; and when, fresh from 



14 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

my conversation, I found this letter just arrived by 
mail, and left while I was at table, and on breaking 
the seal read what I had a few moments before been 
telling, I was greatly surprised, and immediately made 
a note of the occurrence, as given above. 

I had long been familiar with all the details of this 
celebrated case, but had not referred to it, so far as I 
can remember, for months or years. I know of no 
train of thought which led me to speak of it on that 
particular day. I had never alluded to it before in 
that company, nor had I ever spoken of it with Mr. 
Rathbone. 

I . told this story over our teacups. Among the 
company at the table is a young English girl. She 
seemed to be amused by the story. " Fancy ! " she 
said, — " how veryvery odd ! " " It was a striking 
and curious coincidence," said the professor who was 
with us at the table. "As remarkable as two tea- 
spoons in one saucer," was the comment of a college 
youth who happened to be one of the company. But 
the member of our circle whom the reader will here- 
after know as Number Seven, began stirring his tea in 
a nervous sort of way, and I knew that he was getting 
ready to say something about the case. An ingenious 
man he is, with a brain like a tinder-box, its contents 
catching at any spark that is flying about. I always 
like to hear what he says when his tinder brain has a 
spark fall into it. It does not follow that because he 
is often wrong he may not sometimes be right, for he 
is no fool. He treated my narrative very seriously. 

The reader need not be startled at the new terms 
he introduces. Indeed, I am not quite sure that some 
thinking people will not adopt his view of the matter, 
which seems to have a degree of plausibility as he 
states and illustrates it. 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 15 

" The impulse which led you to tell that story passed 
directly from the letter, which came charged from the 
cells of the cerebral battery of your correspondent. 
The distance at which the action took place [the let- 
ter was left on a shelf twenty-four feet from the place 
where I was sitting] shows this charge to have been 
of notable intensity. 

M Brain action through space without material sym- 
bolism, such as speech, expression, etc., is analogous 
to electrical induction. Charge the prime conductor 
of an electrical machine, and a gold-leaf electrometer, 
far off from it, will at once be disturbed. Electricity, 
as we all know, can be stored and transported as if it 
were a measurable fluid. 

" Your incident is a typical example of cerebral in- 
duction from a source containing stored cerebricity. 
I use this word, not to be found in my dictionaries, as 
expressing the brain-cell power corresponding to elec- 
tricity. Think how long it was before we had at- 
tained any real conception of the laws that govern the 
wonderful agent, which now works in harness with the 
other trained and subdued forces ! It is natural that 
cerebricity should be the last of the unweighable 
agencies to be understood. The human eye had seen 
heaven and earth and all that in them is before it saw 
itself as our instruments enable us to see it. This 
fact of yours, which seems so strange to you, belongs 
to a great series of similar facts familiarly known now 
to many persons, and before long to be recognized as 
generally as those relating to the electric telegraph 
and the slaving 'dynamo.' 

" What ! you cannot conceive of a charge of cere- 
bricity fastening itself on a letter-sheet and clinging 
to it for weeks, while it was shuffling about in mail- 



16 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

bags, rolling over the ocean, and shaken up in railroad 
cars? And yet the odor of a grain of musk will 
hang round a note or a dress for a lifetime. Do you 
not remember what Professor Silliman says, in that 
pleasant journal of his, about the little ebony cabinet 
which Mary, Queen of Scots, brought with her from 
France, — how ' its drawers still exhale the sweetest 
perfumes ' ? If they could hold their sweetness for 
more than two hundred years, why should not a writ- 
ten page retain for a week or a month the equally 
mysterious effluence poured over it from the thinking 
marrow, and diffuse its vibrations to another excitable 
nervous centre ? " 

I have said that although our imaginative friend is 
given to wild speculations, he is not always necessarily 
wrong. We know too little about the laws of brain- 
force to be dogmatic with reference to it. I am, 
myself, therefore, fully in sympathy with the psycho- 
logical investigators. When it comes to the various 
pretended sciences by which men aud women make 
large profits, attempts at investigation are very apt to 
be used as lucrative advertisements for the charlatans. 
But a series of investigations of the significance of 
certain popular beliefs and superstitions, a careful 
study of the relations of certain facts to each other, 
— whether that of cause and effect, or merely of co- 
incidence, — is a task not unworthy of sober-minded 
and well-trained students of nature. Such a series of 
investigations has been recently instituted, and was 
reported at a late meeting held in the rooms of the 
Boston Natural History Society. The results were 
mostly negative, and in one sense a disappointment. 
A single case, related by Professor Royce, attracted a 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 17 

good deal of attention. It was reported in the next 
morning's newspapers, and will be given at full length, 
doubtless, in the next number of the Psychological 
Journal. The leading facts were, briefly, these : A 
lady in Hamburg, Germany, wrote, on the 22d of 
June last, that she had what she supposed to be night 
mare on the night of the 17th, five days before. " It 
seemed," she wrote, " to belong to you ; to be a hor= 
rid pain in your head, as if it were being forcibly 
jammed into an iron casque, or some such pleasant in- 
strument of torture." It proved that on that same 
17th of June her sister was undergoing a painful 
operation at the hands of a dentist. " No single 
case," adds Professor Royce, " proves, or even makes 
probable, the existence of telepathic toothaches ; but if 
there are any more cases of this sort, we want to hear 
of them, and that all the more because no folk-lore 
and no supernatural horrors have as yet mingled with 
the natural and well-known impressions that people 
associate with the dentist's chair." 

The case I have given is, I am confident, absolutely 
free from every source of error. I do not remember 
that Mr. Rathbone had communicated with me since 
he sent me a plentiful supply of mistletoe a year ago 
last Christmas. The account I received from him was 
cut out of "The Sporting Times" of March 5, 1887c 
My own knowledge of the case came from " Kirby's 
Wonderful Museum," a work presented to me at least 
thirty years ago. I had not looked at the account, 
spoken of it, nor thought of it for a long time, when 
it came to me by a kind of spontaneous generation, 
as it seemed, having no connection with any previous 
train of thought that I was aware of. I consider the 



18 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

evidence of entire independence, apart from possible 
" telepathic " causation, completely water-proof, air- 
tight, incombustible, and unassailable. 

I referred, when first reporting this curious case of 
coincidence, with suggestive circumstances, to two 
others, one of which I said was the most picturesque 
and the other the most unlikely, as it would seem, to 
happen. This is the first of those two cases : — 

Grenville Tudor Phillips was a younger brother of 
George Phillips, my college classmate, and of Wen- 
dell Phillips, the great orator. He lived in Europe a 
large part of his life, but at last returned, and, in the 
year 1863, died at the house of his brother George. 
I read his death in the paper ; but, having seen and 
heard very little of him during his life, should not 
have been much impressed by the fact, but for the 
following occurrence : between the time of Grenville 
Phillips's death and his burial, I was looking in upon 
my brother, then living in the house in which we were 
both born. Some books which had been my father's 
were stored in shelves in the room I used to occupy 
when at Cambridge. Passing my eye over them, an 
old dark quarto attracted my attention. It must be a 
Bible, I said to myself, — perhaps a rare one, — the 
" Breeches " Bible or some other interesting speci- 
men. I took it from the shelves, and, as I did so, an 
old slip of paper fell out and fluttered to the floor. 
On lifting it I read these words : — 

The name is Grenville Tudor. 
What was the meaning of this slip of paper coming 
to light at this time, after reposing undisturbed so 
long? There was only one way of explaining its 
presence in my father's old Bible, — a copy of the 
Scriptures which I did not remember ever having 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 19 

handled or looked into before. In christening a child 
the minister is liable to forget the name, just at the 
moment when he ought to remember it. My father 
preached occasionally at the Brattle Street Church. 
I take this for granted, for I remember going with 
him on one occasion when he did so. Nothing was 
more likely than that he should be asked to officiate 
at the baptism of the younger son of his wife's first 
cousin, Judge Phillips. This slip was handed him to 
remind him of the name. He brought it home, put it 
in that old Bible, and there it lay quietly for nearly 
half a century, when, as if it had just heard of Mr. 
Phillips's decease, it flew from its hiding-place and 
startled the eyes of those who had just read his name 
in the daily column of deaths. It would be hard to 
find anything more than a mere coincidence here ; but 
it seems curious enough to be worth telling. 

The second of these two last stories must be told in 
prosaic detail to show its whole value as a coincidence. 

One evening while I was living in Charles Street, 
I received a call from Dr. S., a well-known and 
highly respected Boston physician, a particular friend 
of the late Alexander H. Stephens, vice-president of 
the Southern Confederacy. It was with reference to 
a work which Mr. Stephens was about to publish that 
Dr. S. called upon me. After talking that matter 
over we got conversing on other subjects, among the 
rest a family relationship existing between us, — not 
a very near one, but one which I think I had seen 
mentioned in genealogical accounts. Mary S. (the 
last name being the same as that of my visitant), it 
appeared, was the great-great-grandmother of Mrs. H. 
and myself. After cordially recognizing our forgotten 
relationship, now for the first time called to mind, we 



20 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

parted, my guest leaving me for his own home. We 
had been sitting in my library on the lower floor. On 
going up-stairs where Mrs. H. was sitting alone, just 
as I entered the room she pushed a paper across the 
table towards me, saying that perhaps it might inter= 
est me. It was one of a number of old family papers 
which she had brought from the house of her mother, 
recently deceased. 

I opened the paper, which was an old-looking docu- 
ment, and found that it was a copy, perhaps made in 
this century, of the will of that same Mary S. about 
whom we had been talking down-stairs. 

If there is such a thing as a purely accidental coin- 
cidence this must be considered an instance of it. 

All one can say about it is that it seems very un- 
likely that such a coincidence should occur, but it did. 

I have not trie*d to keep my own personality out of 
these stories. But after all, how little difference it 
makes whether or not a writer appears with a mask 
on which everybody can take off, — whether he bolts 
his door or not, when everybody can look in at his 
windows, and all his entrances are at the mercy of the 
critic's skeleton key and the jimmy of any ill-disposed 
assailant ! 

The company have been silent listeners for the most 
part ; but the reader will have a chance to become 
better acquainted with some of them by and by. 



II. 

TO THE READER. 

I KN T OW that it is a hazardous experiment to address 
myself again to a public which in days long past has 
given me a generous welcome. But my readers have 
been, and are, a very faithful constituency. I think 
there are many among them who would rather listen to 
an old voice they are used to than to a new one of 
better quality, even if the " childish treble " should 
betray itself now and then in the tones of the over- 
tired organ. But there must be others, — I am afraid 
many others, — who will exclaim : " He has had his 
day, and why can't he be content ? We don't want 
literary revenants, superfluous veterans, writers who 
have worn out their welcome and still insist on being 
attended to. Give us something fresh, some thins: that 
belongs to our day and generation. Your morning 
draught was well enough, but we don't care for your 
evening slip-slop. You are not in relation with us, 
with our time, our ideas, our aims, our aspirations." 

Alas, alas ! my friend, — my young friend, for your 
hair is not yet whitened, — I am afraid you are too 
nearly right. No doubt, — no doubt. Tea-cups are 
not coffee-caps. They do not hold so much. Their 
pallid infusion is but a feeble stimulant compared 
with the black decoction served at the morning board. 
And so, perhaps, if wisdom like yours were compati- 
ble with years like mine, I should drop my pen and 
make no further attempts upon your patience. 



\ 






22 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

But suppose that a writer who has reached and 
passed the natural limit of serviceable years feels that 
he has some things which he would like to say, and 
which may have an interest for a limited class of read- 
ers, — is he not right in trying his powers and calmly 
taking the risk of failure ? Does it not seem rather 
lazy and cowardly, because he cannot " beat his rec= 
ord," or even come up to the level of what he has 
done in his prime, to shrink from exerting his talent, 
such as it is, now that he has outlived the period of his 
greatest vigor ? A singer who is no longer equal to 
the trials of opera on the stage may yet please at a 
chamber concert or in the drawing-room. There is 
one gratification an old author can afford a certain 
class of critics : that, namely, of comparing him as he 
is with what he was. It is a pleasure to mediocrity 
to have its superiors brought within range, so to 
speak ; and if the ablest of them will only live long 
enough, and keep on writing, there is no pop-gun that 
cannot reach him. But I fear that this is an unamia- 
ble reflection, and I am at this time in a very amiable 
mood. 

I confess that there is something agreeable to me 
in renewing my relations with the reading public. 
Were it but a single appearance, it would give me a 
pleasant glimpse of the time when I was known as 
a frequent literary visitor. Many of my readers — '• if 
I can lure any from the pages of younger writers — 
will prove to be the children, or the grandchildren 9 
of those whose acquaintance I made something more 
than a whole generation ago. I could depend on a 
kind welcome from my contemporaries, — my coevals. 
But where are those contemporaries ? Ay de mi ! as 
Carlyle used to exclaim, — Ah, dear me ! as our old 



OYER THE TEACUPS. 23 

women say, — I look round for them, and see only 
their vacant places. The old vine cannot unwind its 
tendrils. The branch falls with the decay of its sup- 
port, and must cling to the new growths around it, if 
it would not lie helpless in the dust. This paper is a 
new tendril, feeling its way, as it best may, to what- 
ever it can wind around. The thought of finding here 
and there an old friend, and making, it may be, once 
in a while a new one, is very grateful to me. The 
chief drawback to the pleasure is the feeling that I 
am submitting to that inevitable exposure which is the 
penalty of authorship in every form. A writer must 
make up his mind to the possible rough treatment of 
the critics, who swarm like bacteria whenever there is 
any literary material on which they can feed. I have 
had as little to complain of as most writers, yet I 
think it is always with reluctance that one encounters 
the promiscuous handling w T hich the products of the 
mind have to put up with, as much as the fruit and 
provisions in the market-stalls. I had rather be criti- 
cised, however, than criticise; that is, express my 
opinions in the public prints of other writers' work, if 
they are living, and can suffer, as I should often have 
to make them. There are enough, thank Heaven, 
without me. We are literary cannibals, and our wri- 
ters live on each other and each other's productions to 
a fearful extent. What the mulberry leaf is to the 
silk-worm, the author's book, treatise, essay, poem, is 
to the critical larvae that feed upon it. It furnishes 
them with food and clothing. The process may not 
be agreeable to the mulberry leaf or to the printed 
page ; but without it the leaf would not have become 
the silk that covers the empress's shoulders, and but 
for the critic the author's book might never have 



24 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

reached the scholar's table. Scribblers will feed on 
each other, and if we insist on being scribblers we 
must consent to be fed on. We must try to endure 
philosophically what we cannot help, and ought not, I 
suppose, to wish to help. 

It is the custom at our table to vary the usual talks 
by the reading of short papers, in prose or verse, by 
one or more of The Teacups, as we are in the habit 
of calling those who make up our company. Thirty 
years ago, one of our present circle — " Teacup Num- 
ber Two," The Professor, — read a paper on Old Age, 
at a certain Breakfast-table, where he was in the habit 
of appearing. That paper was published at the time, 
and has since seen the light in other forms. He did 
not know so much about old age then as he does now, 
and would doubtless write somewhat differently if he 
took the subject up again. But I found that it was 
the general wish that another of our company should 
let us hear what he had to say about it. I received a 
polite note, requesting me to discourse about old age, 
inasmuch as I was particularly well qualified by my 
experience to write in an authoritative way concerning 
it. The fact is that I, — for it is myself who am speak- 
ing, — have recently arrived at the age of threescore 
years and twenty, — fourscore years we may otherwise 
call it. In the arrangement of our table, I am Tea- 
cup Number One, and I may as well say that I am 
often spoken of as The Dictator. There is nothing 
invidious in this, as I am the oldest of the company 9 
and no claim is less likely to excite jealousy than that 
of priority of birth. 

I received congratulations on reaching my eightieth 
birthday, not only from our circle of Teacups, but 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 25 

from friends, near and distant, in large numbers. 1 
tried to acknowledge these kindly missives with the 
aid of a most intelligent secretary ; but I fear that 
there were gifts not thanked for, and tokens of 
good- will not recognized. Let any neglected corre- 
spondent be assured that it was not intentionally that 
he or she was slighted. I was grateful for every such 
mark of esteem ; even for the telegram from an un- 
known friend in a distant land, for which I cheerfully 
paid the considerable charge which the sender doubt- 
less knew it would give me pleasure to disburse for 
such an expression of friendly feeling. 

I will not detain the reader any longer from the 
essay I have promised. 

This is the paper read to The Teacups, 

It is in A Song of Moses that we find the words, 
made very familiar to us by the Episcopal Burial Ser- 
vice, which place the natural limit of life at three- 
score years and ten, with an extra ten years for some 
of a stronger constitution than the average. Yet we 
are told that Moses himself lived to be a hundred and 
twenty years old, and that his eye was not dim nor 
his natural strength abated. This is hard to accept 
literally, but we need not doubt that he was very old, 
and in remarkably good condition/or a man of his age. 
Among his followers was a stout old captain, Caleb, 
the son of Jephunneh. This ancient warrior speaks 
of himself in these brave terms : " Lo, I am this day 
fourscore and five years old. As yet, I am as strong 
this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me ; as 
my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for 
war, both to go out and to come in." It is not likely 
that anybody believed his brag about his being as 



26 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

good a man for active service at eighty-five as he was 
at forty, when Moses sent him out to spy the land of 
Canaan. But he was, no doubt, lusty and vigorous 
for his years, and ready to smite the Canaanites hip 
and thigh, and drive them out, and take possession 
of their land, as he did forthwith, when Moses gave 
him leave. 

Grand old men there were, three thousand years 
ago ! But not all octogenarians were like Caleb, the 
son of Jephunneh. Listen to poor old Barzillai, and 
hear him piping : " I am this day fourscore years old; 
and can I discern between good and evil? Can thy 
servant taste what I eat or what I drink? Can I 
hear any more the voice of singing men and singing 
women ? Wherefore, then, should thy servant be yet 
a burden unto my lord the king ? " And poor King 
David was worse off than this, as you all remember, 
at the early age of seventy. 

Thirty centuries do not seem to have made any 
very great difference in the extreme limits of life. 
Without pretending to rival the alleged cases of life 
prolonged beyond the middle of its second century, 
such as those of Henry Jenkins and Thomas Parr, we 
can make a good showing of centenarians and nonage- 
narians. I myself remember Dr. Holyoke, of Salem, 
son of a president of Harvard College, who answered 
a toast proposed in his honor at a dinner given to 
him on his hundredth birthday. 

"Father Cleveland," our venerated city missionary, 
was born June 21, 1772, and died June 5, 1872, 
within a little more than a fortnight of his hundredth 
birthday. Colonel Perkins, of Connecticut, died re* 
gently after celebrating his centennial anniversary. 

Among nonagenarians, three whose names are wel] 






OVER THE TEACUPS. 27 

known to Bostonians, Lord Lyndhurst, Josiali Quincy, 
and Sidney Bartlett, were remarkable for retaining 
their faculties in their extreme age. That patriarch 
of our American literature, the illustrious historian of 
his country, is still with us, his birth dating in 1800. 

Ranke, the great German historian, died at the age 
of ninety-one, and Chevreul, the eminent chemist, at 
that of a hundred and two. 

Some English sporting characters have furnished 
striking examples of robust longevity. In Gilpin's 
" Forest Scenery " there is the story of one of these 
horseback heroes. Henry Hastings was the name of 
this old gentleman, who lived in the time of Charles 
the First. It would be hard to find a better portrait 
of a hunting squire than that which the Earl of 
Shaftesbury has the credit of having drawn of this 
very peculiar personage. His description ends by 
saying, " He lived to be an hundred, and never lost his 
eyesight nor used spectacles. He got on horseback 
without help, and rode to the death of the stag till he 
was past fourscore." 

Everything depends on habit. Old people can do, 
of course, more or less well, what they have been 
doing all their lives ; but try to teach them any new 
tricks, and the truth of the old adage will very soon 
show itself. Mr. Henry Hastings had done nothing 
but hunt all his days, and his record would seem to 
have been a good deal like that of Philippus Zaehdarni 
in that untranslatable epitaph which may be found in 
" Sartor Resartus." Judged by its products, it was a 
very short life of a hundred useless twelvemonths. 

It is something to have climbed the white summit, 
the Mont Blanc of fourscore. A small number only 
of mankind ever see their eightieth anniversary. I 



28 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

miglit go to the statistical tables of the annuity and 
life insurance offices for extended and exact informa- 
tion, but I prefer to take the facts which have im- 
pressed themselves upon me in my own career. 

The class of 1829 at Harvard College, of which I 
am a member, graduated, according to the triennial, 
fifty-nine in number. It is sixty years, then, since that 
time ; and as they were, on an average, about twenty 
years old, those who survive must have reached four» 
score years. Of the fifty-nine graduates ten only are 
living, or were at the last accounts ; one in six, very 
nearly. In the first ten years after graduation, our 
third decade, when we were between twenty and thirty 
years old, we lost three members, — about one in 
twenty ; between the ages of thirty and forty, eight 
died, — one in seven of those the decade began with ; 
from forty to fifty, only two, — or one in twenty-four ; 
from fifty to sixty, eight, — or one in six ; from sixty 
to seventy, fifteen, — or two out of every five ; from 
seventy to eighty, twelve, — or one in two. The 
greatly increased mortality which began with our 
seventh decade went on steadily increasing. At sixty 
we come " within range of the rifle-pits," to borrow 
an expression from my friend Weir Mitchell. 

Our eminent classmate, the late Professor Benjamin 
Peirce, showed by numerical comparison that the men 
of superior ability outlasted the average of their fel- 
low-graduates. He himself lived a little beyond his 
threescore and ten years. James Freeman Clarke 
almost reached the age of eighty. The eighth decade 
brought the fatal year for Benjamin Bobbins Curtis, 
the great lawyer, who was one of the judges of the 
Supreme Court of the United States ; for the very 
able chief justice of Massachusetts, George Tyler 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 29 

Bigelow ; and for that famous wit and electric centre 
of social life, George T. Davis. At the last annual 
dinner every effort was made to bring all the survivors 
of the class together. Six of the ten living members 
were there, — six old men in the place of the thirty or 
forty classmates who surrounded the long, oval table 
in 1859, when I asked, " Has there any old fellow got 
mixed with the boys ? " — " boys " whose tongues were 
as the vibrating leaves of the forest ; whose talk was 
like the voice of many waters ; whose laugh was as 
the breaking of mighty waves upon the seashore. 
Among the six at our late dinner was our first scholar, 
the thorough-bred and accomplished engineer who held 
the city of Lawrence in his brain before it spread 
itself out along the banks of the Merrimac. There, 
too, was the poet whose National Hymn, " My Coun- 
try, 't is of thee," is known to more millions, and 
dearer to many of them, than all the other songs writ- 
ten since the Psalms of David. Four of our six were 
clergymen ; the engineer and the present writer com- 
pleted the list. Were we melancholy ? Did we talk 
of graveyards and epitaphs ? No, — we remembered 
our dead tenderly, serenely, feeling deeply what we 
had lost in those who but a little while ago were with 
us. How could we forget James Freeman Clarke, 
that man of noble thought and vigorous action, who 
pervaded this community with his spirit, and was felt 
through all its channels as are the light and the 
strength that radiate through the wires which stretch 
above us ? It was a pride and a happiness to have 
such classmates as he was to remember. We were 
not the moping, complaining graybeards that many 
might suppose we must have been. We had been 
favored with the blessing of long life. We had seen 



30 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

the drama well into its fifth act. The sun still warmed 
us, the air was still grateful and life-giving. But there 
was another underlying source of our cheerful equa- 
nimity, which we could not conceal from ourselves if 
we had wished to do it. Nature's kindly anodyne is 
telling upon us more and more with every year. Our 
old doctors used to give an opiate which they called 
" the black drop." It was stronger than laudanum ? 
and, in fact, a dangerously powerful narcotic. Some- 
thing like this is that potent drug in Nature's pharma- 
copoeia which she reserves for the time of need, — the 
later stages of life. She commonly begins adminis- 
tering it at about the time of the "grand climacteric," 
the ninth septennial period, the sixty-third year. 
More and more freely she gives it, as the years go on, 
to her grey-haired children, until, if they last long 
enough, every faculty is benumbed, and they drop off 
quietly into sleep under its benign influence. 

Do you say that old age is unfeeling ? It has not 
vital energy enough to supply the waste of the more 
exhausting emotions. Old Men's Tears, which fur- 
nished the mournful title to Joshua Scottow's Lamen- 
tations, do not suggest the deepest grief conceivable. 
A little breath of wind brings down the raindrops 
which have gathered on the leaves of the tremulous 
poplars. A very slight suggestion brings the tears 
from Marlborough's eyes, but they are soon over, and 
he is smiling again as an allusion carries him back to 
the days of Blenheim and Malplaquet. Envy not the 
old man the tranquillity of his existence, nor yet blame 
him if it sometimes looks like apathy. Time, the in- 
exorable, does not threaten him with the scythe so 
often as with the sand-bag. He does not cut, but he 
stuns and stupefies. One's fellow-mortals can afford 



OVER THE TEACUPS.' 31 

to be as considerate and tender with him as Time and 
Nature. 

There was not much boasting among us of our pres- 
ent or our past, as we sat together in the little room at 
the great hotel. A certain amount of self-deception is 
quite possible at threescore years and ten, but at three* 
score years and twenty Nature has shown most of those 
who live to that age that she is earnest, and means to 
dismantle and have done with them in a very little 
while. As for boasting of our past, the laudator tem- 
poris acti makes but a poor figure in our time. Old 
people used to talk of their youth as if there were 
giants in those days. We knew some tall men when 
we were young, but we can see a man taller than any 
one among them at the nearest dime museum. We 
had handsome women among us, of high local reputa- 
tion, but nowadays we have professional beauties who 
challenge the world to criticise them as boldly as 
Phryne ever challenged her Athenian admirers. We 
had fast horses, — did not " Old Blue " trot a mile in 
three minutes ? True, but there is a three-year-old 
colt just put on the track who has done it in a little 
more than two thirds of that time. It seems as if the 
material world had been made over again since we 
were boys. It is but a short time since we were count- 
ing up the miracles we had lived to witness. The 
list is familiar enough : the railroad, the ocean steamer, 
photography, the spectroscope, the telegraph, tele- 
phone, phonograph, anaesthetics, electric illumination, 
— with such lesser wonders as the friction match, the 
sewing machine, and the bicycle. And now, we said, 
we must have come to the end of these unparalleled 
developments of the forces of nature. We must rest 
on our achievements. The nineteenth century is not 



82 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

likely to add to them ; we must wait for the twentieth 
century. Many of us, perhaps most of us, felt in that 
way. We had seen our planet furnished by the art of 
man with a complete nervous system : a spinal cord 
beneath the ocean, secondary centres, — ganglions, — = 
in all the chief places where men are gathered to- 
gether, and ramifications extending throughout civili- 
zation. All at once, by the side of this talking and 
light-giving apparatus, we see another wire stretched 
over our heads, carrying force to a vast metallic mus- 
cular system, — a slender cord conveying the strength 
of a hundred men, of a score of horses, of a team of 
elephants. The lightning is tamed and harnessed, 
the thunderbolt has become a common carrier. No 
more surprises in this century ! A voice whispers, 
What next f 

It will not do for us to boast about our young days 
and what they had to show. It is a great deal better 
to boast of what they could not show, and, strange as 
it may seem, there is a certain satisfaction in it. In 
these days of electric lighting, when you have only to 
touch a button and your parlor or bedroom is instantly 
flooded with light, it is a pleasure to revert to the era 
of the tinder-box, the flint and steel, and the brim- 
stone match. It gives me an almost proud satisfaction 
to tell how we used, when those implements were not 
at hand or not employed, to light our whale-oil lamp 
by blowing a live coal held against the wick, often 
swelling our cheeks and reddening our faces until we 
were on the verge of apoplexy. I love to tell of our 
stage-coach experiences, of our sailing-packet voyages, 
of the semi-barbarous destitution of all modern com- 
forts and conveniences through which we bravely lived 
and came out the estimable personages you find us. 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 33 

Think of it ! All my boyish shooting was done with 
a flint-lock gun ; the percussion lock came to me as 
one of those new-fangled notions people had just got 
hold of. We ancients can make a grand display of 
minus quantities in our reminiscences, and the figures 
look almost as well as if they had the plus sign before 
them. 

I am afraid that old people found life rather a dull 
business in the time of King David and his rich old 
subject and friend, Barzillai, who, poor man, could not 
have read a wicked novel, nor enjoyed a symphony 
concert, if they had had those luxuries in his day. 
There were no pleasant firesides, for there were no 
chimneys. There were no daily newspapers for the 
old man to read, and he could not read them if there 
were, with his dimmed eyes, nor hear them read, very 
probably, with his dulled ears. There was no tobacco, 
a soothing drug, which in its various forms is a great 
solace to many old men and to some old women, — 
Carlyle and his mother used to smoke their pipes to- 
gether, you remember. 

Old age is infinitely more cheerful, for intelligent 
people at least, than it was two or three thousand 
years ago. It is our duty, so far as we can, to keep 
it so. There will always be enough about it that is 
solemn, and more than enough, alas ! that is sadden= 
ing. But how much there is in our times to lighten 
its burdens ! If they that look out at the windows be 
darkened, the optician is happy to supply them with 
eye-glasses for use before the public, and spectacles 
for their hours of privacy. If the grinders cease be- 
cause they are few, they can be made many again by 
a third dentition, which brings no toothache in its 
train. By temperance and good habits of life, proper 



34 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

clothing, well-warmed, well-drained, and well-venti= 
lated dwellings, and sufficient, not too much exercise, 
the old man of our time may keep his muscular 
strength in very good condition. I doubt if Mr„ 
Gladstone, who is fast nearing his eightieth birthday, 
would boast, in the style of Caleb, that he was as good 
a man with his axe as he was when he was forty, but 
I would back him, — if the match were possible, — - 
for a hundred shekels, against that over-confident old 
Israelite, to cut down and chop up a cedar of Leba- 
non. I know a most excellent clergyman, not far 
from my own time of life, whom I would pit against 
any old Hebrew rabbi or Greek philosopher of his 
years and weight, if they could return to the flesh, to 
run a quarter of a mile on a good, level track. 

We must not make too much of such exceptional 
cases of prolonged activity. I often reproached my 
dear friend and classmate, James Freeman Clarke, 
that his ceaseless labors made it impossible for his co- 
evals to enjoy the luxury of that repose which their 
years demanded. A wise old man, the late Dr. James 
Walker, president of Harvard University, said that 
the great privilege of old age was the getting rid of 
responsibilities. These hard-working veterans will 
not let one get rid of them until he drops in his har- 
ness, and so gets rid of them and his life together. 
How often has many a tired old man envied the super- 
annuated family cat, stretched upon the rug before 
the fire, letting the genial warmth tranquilly diffuse 
itself through all her internal arrangements ! No 
more watching for mice in dark, damp cellars, no 
more awaiting the savage gray rat at the mouth of 
his den, no more scurrying up trees and lamp-posts 
to avoid the neighbor's cur who wishes to make her 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 35 

acquaintance ! It is very grand to " die in harness," 
but it is very pleasant to Lave the tight straps un- 
buckled and the heavy collar lifted from the neck and 
shoulders. 

It is natural enough to cling to life. We are used 
to atmospheric existence, and can hardly conceive of 
ourselves except as breathing creatures. We have 
never tried any other mode of being, or, if we have, 
we have forgotten all about it, whatever Wordsworth's 
grand ode may tell us we remember. Heaven itself 
must be an experiment to every human soul which 
shall find itself there. It may take time for an earth- 
born saint to become acclimated to the celestial ether, 
— that is, if time can be said to exist for a disem- 
bodied spirit. We are all sentenced to capital pun- 
ishment for the crime of living, and though the con- 
demned cell of our earthly existence is but a narrow 
and bare dwelling-place, we have adjusted ourselves 
to it, and made it tolerably comfortable for the little 
while we are to be confined in it. The prisoner of 
Chillon 

regained [his] freedom with a sigh, 

and a tender-hearted mortal might be pardoned for 
lookiug back, like the poor lady who was driven from 
her dwelling-place by fire and brimstone, at the home 
he was leaving for the " undiscovered country." 

On the other hand, a good many persons, not suici- 
dal in their tendencies, get more of life than they 
want. One of our wealthy citizens said, on hearing 
that a friend had dropped off from apoplexy, that it 
made his mouth water to hear of such a case. It was 
an odd expression, but I have no doubt that the fine 
old gentleman to whom it was attributed made use of 
it, He had had enough of his gout and other infirmi- 



15b OVER THE TEACUPS. 

ties. Swift's account of the Struldbrugs is not very 
amusing reading for old people., but some may find it 
a consolation to reflect on the probable miseries they 
escape in not being doomed to an undying earthly ex= 
istence. 

There are strange diversities in the way in which 
different old persons look upon their prospects. A 
millionaire whom I well remember confessed that he 
should like to live long enough to learn how much a 
certain fellow-citizen, a multimillionaire, was worth. 
One of the three nonagenarians before referred to ex- 
pressed himself as having a great curiosity about the 
new sphere of existence to which he was looking for- 
ward. 

The feeling must of necessity come to many aged 
persons that they have outlived their usefulness ; that 
they are no longer wanted, but rather in the way, 
drags on the wheels rather than helping them forward. 
But let them remember the often-quoted line of Mil- 
ton, — 

" They also serve who only stand and wait." 

This is peculiarly true of them. They are helping- 
others without always being aware of it. They are 
the shields, the breakwaters, of those who come after 
them. Every decade is a defence of the one next be- 
hind it. At thirty the youth has sobered into man- 
hood, but the strong men of forty rise in almost un- 
broken rank between him and the approaches of old 
age as they show in the men of fifty. At forty he 
looks with a sense of security at the strong men of 
fifty, and sees behind them the row of sturdy sexage- 
narians. When fifty is reached, somehow sixty does 
not look so old as it once used to, and seventy is still 
afar off. After sixty the stern sentence of the buria] 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 37 



service seems to have a meaning that one did not no- 
tice in former years. There begins to be something 
personal about it. But if one lives to seventy he soon 
gets used to the text with the threescore years and ten 
in it, and begins to count himself among those who by 
reason of strength are destined to reach fourscore, of 
whom he can see a number still in reasonably good 
condition. The octogenarian loves to read about peo° 
pie of ninety and over. He peers among the asterisks 
of the triennial catalogue of the University for the 
names of graduates who have been seventy years out 
of college and remain still unstarred. He is curious 
about the biographies of centenarians. Such esca- 
pades as those of that terrible old sinner and ancestor 
of great men, the Eeverend Stephen Bachelder, inter- 
est him as they never did before. But he cannot de- 
ceive himself much longer. See him walking on a 
level surface, and he steps off almost as well as ever ; 
but watch him coming down a flight of stairs, and the 
family record could not tell his years more faithfully. 
He cut you dead, you say ? Did it occur to you that 
he could not see you clearly enough to know you from 
any other son or daughter of Adam ? He said he was 
very glad to hear it, did he, when you told him that 
your beloved grandmother had just deceased? Did 
you happen to remember that though he does not 
allow that he is deaf, he will not deny that he does 
not hear quite so well as he used to? No matter 
about his failings ; the longer he holds on to life, the 
longer he makes life seem to all the living who fol- 
low him, and thus he is their constant benefactor. 

Every stage of existence has its special trials and 
its special consolations. Habits are the crutches of 
old age ; by the aid of these we manage to hobble 



38 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

along after the mental joints are stiff and the muscles 
rheumatic, to speak metaphorically, — that is to say, 
when every act of self-determination costs an effort 
and a pang. We become more and more automatic as 
we grow older, and if we lived long enough we should 
come to be pieces of creaking machinery like Maelzel's 
chess player, — or what that seemed to be. 

Emerson was sixty-three years old, the year I have 
referred to as that of the grand climacteric, when he 
read to his son the poem he called " Terminus," be- 
ginning : 

" It is time to be old, 
To take in sail. 
The God of bounds, 
Who sets to seas a shore, 
Came to me in his fatal rounds 
And said, ' No more ! ' " 

It was early in life to feel that the productive stage 
was over, but he had received warning from within, 
and did not wish to wait for outside advices. There 
is all the difference in the world in the mental as in 
the bodily constitution of different individuals. Some 
must " take in sail " sooner, some later. We can get 
a useful lesson from the American and the English 
elms on our Common. The American elms are quite 
bare, and have been so for weeks. They know very 
well that they are going to have storms to wrestle 
with ; they have not forgotten the gales of September 
and the tempests of the late autumn and early winter. 
It is a hard light they are going to have, and they 
strip their coats off and roll up their shirt-sleeves, and 
show themselves bare-armed and ready for the con- 
test. The English elms are of a more robust build, 
and stand defiant, with all their summer clothing 
about their sturdy frames. They may yet have to 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 39 

learn a lesson of their American cousins, for notwith* 
standing their compact and solid structure they go to 
pieces in the great winds just as ours do. We must 
drop much of our foliage before winter is upon us. 
We must take in sail and throw over cargo, if that is 
necessary, to keep us afloat. We have to decide be- 
tween our duties and our instinctive demand of rest. 
I can believe that some have welcomed the decay of 
their active powers because it furnished them with 
peremptory reasons for sparing themselves during the 
few years that were left them. 

Age brings other obvious changes besides the loss 
of active power. The sensibilities are less keen, the 
intelligence is less lively, as we might expect under 
the influence of that narcotic which Nature adminis- 
ters. But there is another effect of her " black drop " 
which is not so commonly recognized. Old age is like 
an opium-dream. Nothing seems real except what is 
unreal. I am sure that the pictures painted by the 
imagination, — the faded frescos on the walls of mem- 
ory, — come out in clearer and brighter colors than 
belonged to them many years earlier. Nature has her 
special favors for her children of every age, and this 
is one which she reserves for our second childhood. 

Xo man can reach an advanced age without think- 
ing of that great change to which, in the course of 
nature, he must be so near. It has been remarked 
that the sterner beliefs of rigid theologians are apt to 
soften in their later years. All reflecting persons., 
even those whose minds have been half palsied by the 
deadly dogmas which have done all they could to dis- 
organize their thinking powers, — all reflecting per- 
sons, I say, must recognize, in looking back over a 
long life, how largely their creeds, their course of life, 



40 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

their wisdom and unwisdom, their whole characters, 
were shaped by the conditions which surrounded them. 
Little children they came from the hands of the Fa- 
ther of all ; little children in their helplessness, their 
ignorance, they are going back to Him. They cannot 
help feeling that they are to be transferred from the 
rude embrace of the boisterous elements to arms that 
will receive them tenderly. Poor planetary founds 
lings, they have known hard treatment at the hands 
of the brute forces of nature, from the control of which 
they are soon to be set free. There are some old 
pessimists, it is true, who believe that they and a few 
others are on a raft, and that the ship which they have 
quitted, holding the rest of mankind, is going down 
with all on board. It is no wonder that there should 
be such when we remember what have been the teach- 
ings of the priesthood through long series of ignorant 
centuries. Every age has to shape the Divine image 
it worships over again, — the present age and our own 
country are busily engaged in the task at this time. 
We unmake Presidents and make new ones. This is 
an apprenticeship for a higher task. Our doctrinal 
teachers are unmaking the Deity of the Westminster 
Catechism and trying to model a new one, with more 
of modern humanity and less of ancient barbarism in 
his composition. If Jonathan Edwards had lived long 
enough, I have no doubt his creed would have softened 
Into a kindly, humanized belief. 

Some twenty or thirty years ago, I said to Long= 
fellow that certain statistical tables I had seen went 
to show that poets were not a long-lived race. He 
doubted whether there was anything to prove they 
were particularly short-lived. Soon after this, he 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 41 

handed me a list lie had drawn up. I cannot lay my 
hand upon it at this moment, but I remember that 
Metastasio was the oldest of them all. He died at the 
age of eighty-four. I have had some tables made out, 
which I have every reason to believe are correct so far 
as they go. From these, it appears that twenty Eng- 
lish poets lived to the average age of fifty-six years 
and a little over. The eight American poets on the 
list averaged seventy-three and a half, nearly, and 
they are not all dead yet. The list including Greek, 
Latin, Italian, and German poets, with American and 
English, gave an average of a little over sixty-two 
years. Our young poets need not be alarmed. They 
can remember that Bryant lived to be eighty-three 
years old, that Longfellow reached seventy-five and 
Halleck seventy-seven, while Whittier is living at the 
age of nearly eighty-two. Tenuyson is still writing at 
eighty, and Browning reached the age of seventy-seven. 
Shall a man who in his younger days has written 
poetry, or what passed for it, continue to attempt it 
in his later years ? Certainly, if it amuses or interests 
him, no one would object to his writing in verse as 
much as he likes. Whether he should continue to 
write for the public is another question. Poetry is a 
good deal a matter of heart-beats, and the circulation 
is more languid in the later period of life. The joints 
are less supple ; the arteries are more or less " ossi- 
fied." Something like these changes has taken place 
in the mind. It has lost the flexibility, the plastic 
docility, which it had in youth and early manhood, 
when the gristle had but just become hardened into 
bone. It is the nature of poetry to writhe itself along 
through the tangled growths of the vocabulary, as a 
snake winds through the grass, in sinuous, complex, 



42 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

and unexpected curves, which crack every joint that is 
not supple as india-rubber. 

I had a poem that I wanted to print just here. But 
after what I have this moment said, I hesitated, 
thinking that I might provoke the obvious remark 
that I exemplified the unfitness of which I had been 
speaking. I remembered the advice I had given to a 
poetical aspirant not long since, which I think deserves 
a paragraph to itself. 

My friend, I said, I hope you will not write in verse. 
When you write in prose you say what you mean. 
When you write in rhyme you say what you must. 

Should I send this poem to the publishers, or not ? 
" Some said, * John, print it ; ' others said, 'Not so.' " 

I did not ask "some" or "others." Perhaps I 
should have thought it best to keep my poem to my- 
self and the few friends for whom it was written. All 
at once, my daimon — that other Me over whom I 
button my waistcoat when I button it over my own 
person — put it into my head to look up the story of 
Madame Saqui. She was a famous danseuse, who 
danced Napoleon in and out, and several other dynas- 
ties besides. Her last appearance was at the age of 
seventy-six, which is rather late in life for the tight 
rope, one of her specialties. Jules Janin mummified 
her when she died in 1866, at the age of eighty. He 
spiced her up in his eulogy as if she had been the 
queen of a modern Pharaoh. His foamy and flowery 
rhetoric put me into such a state of good-nature that 
I said, I will print my poem, and let the critical Gil 
Bias handle it as he did the archbishop's sermon, — 
or would have done, if he had been a writer for the 
" Salamanca Weekly." 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 43 

It must be premised that a very beautiful loving 
cup was presented to me on my recent birthday, by 
eleven ladies of my acquaintance. This was the most 
costly and notable of all the many tributes I received, 
and for which in different forms I expressed my grat- 
itude. 

TO THE ELEVEN LADIES 

WHO PRESENTED ME WITH A SILVER LOVING CUP ON THE 
TWENTY-NINTH OF AUGUST, M DCCC LXXXIX. 

" Who gave this cup ? " The secret thou wouldst steal 
Its brimming flood forbids it to reveal : 
No mortal's eye shall read it till he first 
Cool the red throat of thirst. 

If on the golden floor one draught remain, 
Trust me, thy careful search will be in vain ; 
Not till the bowl is emptied shalt thou know 
The names enrolled below. 

Deeper than Truth lies buried in her well 
Those modest names the graven letters spell 
Hide from the sight ; but wait, and thou shalt see 
Who the good angels be 

Whose bounty glistens in the beauteous gift 
That friendly hands to loving lips shall lift : 
Turn the fair goblet when its floor is dry, — 
Their names shall meet thine eye. 

Count thou their number on the beads of Heaven, ■= 
Alas ! the clustered Pleiads are but seven ; 
Nay, the nine sister Muses are too few, — 
The Graces must add two. 

" For whom this gift ? " For one who all too long 
Clings to his bough among the groves of song ; 
Autumn's last leaf, that spreads its faded wing 
To greet a second spring. 



44 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

Dear friends, kind friends, whate'er the cup may hold, 
Bathing its burnished depths, will change to gold : 
Its last bright drop let thirsty Msenads drain, 
Its fragrance will remain. 

Better love's perfume in the empty bowl 
Than wine's nepenthe for the aching sou?. 
Sweeter than song that ever poet sung, 
It makes an old heart young ! 



III. 

After the reading of the paper which was reported 
in the preceding number of this record, the company 
fell into talk upon the subject with which it dealt. 

The Mistress. " I could have wished you had said 
more about the religious attitude of old age as such. 
Surely the thoughts of aged persons must be very 
much taken up with the question of what is to become 
of them. I should like to have The Dictator explain 
himself a little more fully on this point." 

My dear madam, I said, it is a delicate matter to 
talk about. You remember Mr. Calhoun's response 
to the advances of an over-zealous young clergyman 
who wished to examine him as to his outfit for the 
long journey. I think the relations between man and 
his Maker grow more intimate, more confidential, if I 
may say so, with advancing years. The old man is 
less disposed to argue about special matters of belief, 
and more ready to sympathize with spiritually minded 
persons without anxious questioning as to the fold to 
which they belong. That kindly judgment which 
he exercises with regard to others he will, naturally 
enough, apply to himself. The caressing tone in which 
the Emperor Hadrian addresses his soul is very much 
like that of an old person talking with a grandchild or 
some other pet : — 

" Animula, vagula, blandula, 
Hospes comesque corporis." 

"- Dear little, flitting, pleasing sprite, 
The body's comrade and its guest." 



46 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

How like the language of Catullus to Lesbia's spar= 
row! 

More and more the old man finds his pleasures in 
memory, as the present becomes unreal and dreamlike, 
and the vista of his earthly future narrows and closes 
in upon him. At last, if he live long enough, life 
comes to be little more than a gentle and peaceful de- 
lirium of pleasing recollections. To say, as Dante 
says, that there is no greater grief than to remember 
past happiness in the hour of misery is not giving the 
whole truth. In the midst of the misery, as many 
would call it, of extreme old age, there is often a di- 
vine consolation in recalling the happy moments and 
days and years of times long past. So beautiful are 
the visions of bygone delight that one could hardly 
wish them to become real, lest they should lose their 
ineffable charm. I can almost conceive of a dozing 
and dreamy centenarian saying to one he loves, "Go, 
darling, go! Spread your wings and leave me. So 
shall you enter that world of memory where all is 
lovely. I shall not hear the sound of your footsteps 
any more, but you will float before me, an aerial pres- 
ence. I shall not hear any word from your lips, 
but I shall have a deeper sense of your nearness to me 
than speech can give. I shall feel, in my still soli- 
tude, as the Ancient Mariner felt when the seraph 
band gathered before him : — 

" ' No voice did they impart — 

No voice; but oh! the silence sank 
Like music on my heart.' " 

I said that the lenient way in which the old look at 
the failings of others naturally leads them to judge 
themselves more charitably. They find an apology 
for their short-comings and wrong-doings in anothei 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 47 

consideration. They know very well that they are not 
the same persons as the middle-aged individuals, the 
young men, the boys, the children, that bore their 
names, and whose lives were continuous with theirs. 
Here is an old man who can remember the first time 
he was allowed to go shooting. What a remorseless 
young destroyer he was, to be sure ! Wherever he 
saw a feather, wherever a poor little squirrel showed 
his bushy tail, bang ! went the old " king's arm," and 
the feathers or the fur were set flying like so much 
chaff. Noio that same old man, — the mortal that was 
called by his name and has passed for the same per- 
son for some scores of years, — is considered absurdly 
sentimental by kind-hearted women, because he opens 
the fly-trap and sets all its captives free, — out-of- 
doors, of course, but the dear souls all insisting, mean- 
while, that the flies will, every one of them, be back 
again in the house before the day is over. Do you 
suppose that venerable sinner expects to be rigorously 
called to account for the want of feeling he showed in 
those early years, when the instinct of destruction, de- 
rived from his forest-roaming ancestors, led him to 
acts which he now looks upon with pain and aversion ? 
" Senex " has seen three generations grow up, the 
son repeating the virtues and the failings of the father, 
the grandson showing the same characteristics as the 
father and grandfather. He knows that if such or 
such a young fellow had lived to the next stage of 
life he would very probably have caught up with his 
mother's virtues, which, like a graft of a late fruit on 
an early apple or pear tree, do not ripen in her chil- 
dren until late in the season. He has seen the succes- 
sive ripening of one quality after another on the 
boughs of his own life, and he finds it hard to condemn 



48 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

himself for faults which only needed time to fall off 
and be succeeded by better fruitage. I cannot help 
thinking that the recording angel not only drops a 
tear upon many a human failing, which blots it out 
forever, but that he hands many an old record-book 
to the imp that does his bidding, and orders him to 
throw that into the fire instead of the sinner for whom 
the little wretch had kindled it. 

" And pitched him in after it, I hope," said Number 
Seven, who is in some points as much of an optimist 
as any one among us, in spite of the squint in his 
brain, — or in virtue of it, if you choose to have it so. 

" I like Wordsworth's ' Matthew,' " said Number 
Five, " as well as any picture of old age I remember." 

" Can you repeat it to us ? " asked one of The 
Teacups. 

" I can recall two verses of it," said Number Five, 
and she recited the two following ones. Number Five 
has a very sweet voice. The moment she speaks all 
the faces turn toward her. I don't know what its se- 
cret is, but it is a voice that makes friends of everybody. 

" ' The sighs which Matthew heaved were sighs 
Of one tired out with fun and madness ; 
The tears which came to Matthew's eyes 
Were tears of light, the dew of gladness. 

" ' Yet, sometimes, when the secret cup 
Of still and serious thought went round, 
It seemed as if he drank it up, 
He felt with spirit so profound.' 

" This was the way in which Wordsworth paid his 
tribute to a 

'"Soul of God's hest earthly mould.' " 

The sweet voice left a trance-like silence after it, 
which may have lasted twenty heart-beats. Then I 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 49 

said, We all thank you for your charming quotation. 
How much more wholesome a picture of humanity than 
such stuff as the author of the " Night Thoughts " 
has left us : — 

" Heaven's Sovereign saves all beings but Himself 
Tbat hideous sight, a naked human heart." 

Or the author of " Don Juan," telling us to look into 

" Man's heart, and view the hell that 's there ! " 

I hope I am quoting correctly, but I am more of a 
scholar in Wordsworth than in Byron. Was Parson 
Young's own heart such a hideous spectacle to himself ? 
If it was, he had better have stripped off his surplice. 
No, — it was nothing but the cant of his calling. In 
Byron it was a mood, and he might have said just the 
opposite thing the next day, as he did in his two de- 
scriptions of the Venus de' Medici. That picture of 
old Matthew abides in the memory, and makes one 
think better of his kind. What nobler tasks has the 
poet than to exalt the idea of manhood, and to make 
the world we live in more beautiful ? 

We have two or three young people with us who 
stand a fair chance of furnishing us the element with- 
out which life and tea-tables alike are wanting in 
interest. We are all, of course, watching them, and 
curious to know whether we are to have a romance or 
not. Here is one of them ; others will show them- 
selves presently. 

I cannot say just how old the Tutor is, but I do not 
detect a gray hair in his head. My sight is not so 
good as it was, however, and he may have turned the 
sharp corner of thirty, and even have left it a year 
or two behind him. More probably he is still in the 



50 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

twenties, — say twenty-eight or twenty-nine. He 
seems young, at any rate, excitable, enthusiastic, im- 
aginative, but at the same time reserved. I am afraid 
that he is a poet. When I say " I am afraid," you 
wonder what I mean by the expression. I may take 
another opportunity to explain and justify it ; I will 
only say now that I consider the Muse the most dan- 
gerous of sirens to a young man who has his way to 
make in the world. Now this young man, the Tutor, 
has, I believe, a future before him. He was born for 
a philosopher, — so I read his horoscope, — but he 
has a great liking for poetry and can write well in 
verse. We have had a number of poems offered for 
our entertainment, which I have commonly been re- 
quested to read. There has been some little mystery 
about their authorship, but it is evident that they are 
not all from the same hand. Poetry is as contagious 
as measles, and if a single case of it break out in any 
social circle, or in a school, there are certain to be a 
number of similar cases, some slight, some serious, and 
now and then one so malignant that the subject of it 
should be put on a spare diet of stationery, say from 
two to three penfuls of ink and a half sheet of note- 
paper per diem. If any of our poetical contributions 
are presentable, the reader shall have a chance to see 
them. 

It must be understood that our company is not in- 
variably made up of the same persons. The Mistress, 
as we call her, is expected to be always in her place . 
I make it a rule to be present. The Professor is al- 
most as sure to be at the table as I am. We should 
hardly know what to do without Number Five. It 
takes a good deal of tact to handle such a little assem- 
bly as ours, which is a republic on a small scale, for 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 51 

all tli at they give me the title of Dictator, and Num- 
ber Five is a great help in every social emergency. 
She sees when a discussion tends to become personal, 
and heads off the threatening antagonists. She knows 
when a subject has been knocking about long enough, 
and dexterously shifts the talk to another track. It 
is true that I am the one most frequently appealed te 
as the highest tribunal in doubtful cases, but I often 
care more for Number Five's opinion than I do for 
my own. Who is this Number Five, so fascinating, 
so wise, so full of knowledge, and so ready to learn ? 
She is suspected of being the anonymous author of a 
book which produced a sensation when published, not 
very long ago, and which those who read are very apt 
to read a second time, and to leave on their tables for 
frequent reference. But we have never asked her. I 
do not think she wants to be famous. How she comes 
to be unmarried is a mystery to me ; it must be that 
she has found nobody worth caring enough for. I wish 
she would furnish us with the romance which, as I said, 
our tea-table needs to make it interesting. Perhaps 
the new-comer w r ill make love to her, — I should think 
it possible she might fancy him. 

And who is the new-comer ? He is a Counsellor 
and a Politician. Has a good w r ar record. Is about 
forty-five years old, I conjecture. Is engaged in a 
great law case just now. Said to be very eloquent. 
Has an intellectual head, and the bearing of one who 
has commanded a regiment or perhaps a brigade. 
Altogether an attractive person, scholarly, refined ; 
has some accomplishments not so common as they 
might be in the class we call gentlemen, with an accent 
on the word. 

There is also a young Doctor, waiting for his bald 
spot to come, so that he may get into practice. 



52 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

We have two young ladies at the table, — the Eng- 
lish girl referred to in a former number, and an Amer- 
ican girl of about her own age. Both of them are 
students in one of those institutions — I am not sure 
whether they call it an " annex " or not, but at any 
rate one of those schools where they teach the incom- 
prehensible sort of mathematics and other bewildering 
branches of knowledge above the common level of 
high-school education. They seem to be good friends, 
and form a very pleasing pair when they walk in arm in 
arm ; nearly enough alike to seem to belong together, 
different enough to form an agreeable contrast. 

Of course we were bound to have a Musician at 
our table, and we have one who sings admirably, and 
accompanies himself, or one or more of our ladies, very 
frequently. 

Such is our company when the table is full. But 
sometimes only half a dozen, or it may be only three 
or four, are present. At other times we have a visi- 
tor or two, either in the place of one of our habitual 
number, or in addition to it. We have the elements, 
we think, of a pleasant social gathering, — different 
sexes, ages, pursuits, and tastes, — all that is required 
for a " symphony concert " of conversation. One of 
the curious questions which might well be asked by 
those who had been with us on different occasions 
would be, " How many poets are there among you ? " 
Nobody can answer this question. It is a point of 
etiquette with us not to press our inquiries about these 
anonymous poems too sharply, especially if any of 
them betray sentiments which would not bear rough 
handling. 

1 don't doubt that the different personalities at our 
table will get mixed up in the reader's mind if he is 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 53 

not particularly clear-headed. That happens very of- 
ten, much oftener than all would be willing to confess, 
in reading novels and plays. I am afraid we should 
o*et a good deal confused even in reading our Shake- 
speare if we did not look back now and then at the 
dramatis jiersonce. I am sure that I am very apt to 
confound the characters in a moderately interesting 
novel; indeed, I suspect that the writer is often no 
better off than the reader in the dreary middle of the 
story, when his characters have all made their appear- 
ance, and before they have reached near enough to the 
denoument to have fixed their individuality by the 
position they have arrived at in the chain of the 
narrative. 

My reader might be a little puzzled when he read that 
Number Five did or said such or such a thing, and 
ask, " Whom do you mean by that title ? I am not 
quite sure that I remember." Just associate her with 
that line of Emerson, — 

" Why nature loves the number five," — 

and that will remind you that she is the favorite of 
our table. 

You cannot forget who Number Seven is if I inform 
you that he specially prides himself on being a seventh 
son of a seventh son. The fact of such a descent is 
supposed to carry wonderful endowments with it. 
Number Seven passes for a natural healer. He is 
looked upon as a kind of wizard, and is lucky in liv» 
ing in the nineteenth century instead of the sixteenth 
or earlier. How much confidence he feels in himself 
as the possessor of half-supernatural gifts I cannot say. 
I think his peculiar birthright gives him a certain 
confidence in his whims and fancies which but for 



54 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

that lie would hardly feel. After this explanation, 
when I speak of Number Five or Number Seven, you 
will know to whom I refer. 

The company are very frank in their criticisms of 
each other. " I did not like that expression of yours, 
planetary foundlings" said the Mistress. " It seems 
to me that it is too like atheism for a good Christian 
like you to use." 

Ah, my dear madam, I answered, I was thinking 
of the elements and the natural forces to which man 
was born an almost helpless subject in the rudimentary 
stages of his existence, and from which he has only 
partially got free after ages upon ages of warfare with 
their tyranny. Think what hunger forced the cave- 
man to do ! Think of the surly indifference of the 
storms that swept the forest and the waters, the earth- 
quake chasms that engulfed him, the inundations that 
drowned him out of his miserable hiding-places, the 
pestilences that lay in wait for him, the unequal strife 
with ferocious animals ! I need not sum up all the 
wretchedness that goes to constitute the " martyrdom 
of man." When our forefathers came to this wilder- 
ness as it then was, and found everywhere the bones 
of the poor natives who had perished in the great 
plague (which our Doctor there thinks was probably 
the small-pox), they considered this destructive mal- 
ady as a special mark of providential favor for them. 
How about the miserable Indians ? Were they any- 
thing but planetary foundlings ? No ! Civilization is 
a great foundling hospital, and fortunate are all those 
who get safely into the creche before the frost or the 
malaria has killed them, the wild beasts or the venom- 
ous reptiles worked out their deadly appetites and 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 55 

instincts upon them. The very idea of humanity 
seems to be that it shall take care of itself and de- 
velop its powers in the " struggle for life." Whether 
we approve it or not, if we can judge by the material 
record, man was born a foundling, and fought his way 
as he best might to that kind of existence which we 
call civilized, — one which a considerable part of the 
inhabitants of our planet have reached. 

If you do not like the expression planetary found- 
lings, I have no objection to your considering the race 
as put out to nurse. And what a nurse Nature is ! 
She gives her charge a hole in the rocks to live in, ice 
for his pillow and snow for his blanket, in one part of 
the world ; the jungle for his bedroom in another, 
with the tiger for his watch-dog and the cobra as his 
playfellow. 

Well, I said, there may be other parts of the uni- 
verse where there are no tigers and no cobras. It is 
not quite certain that such realms of creation are bet- 
ter off, on the whole, than this earthly residence of 
ours, which has fought its way up to the development 
of such centres of civilization as Athens and Rome, to 
such personalities as Socrates, as Washington. 

"One of our company has been on an excursion 
among the celestial bodies of our system, I under- 
stand," said the Professor. 

Number Five colored. " Nothing but a dream," 
she said. "The truth is, I had taken ether in the 
evening for a touch of neuralgia, and it set my imagi- 
nation at work in a way quite unusual with me. I 
had been reading a number of books about an ideal 
condition of society, — Sir Thomas More's ' Utopia,' 
Lord Baccn's 'New Atlantis,' and another of more 



56 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

recent date. I went to bed with my brain a good 
deal excited, and fell into a deep slumber, in which I 
passed through some experiences so singular that, on 
awaking, I put them down on paper. I don't know 
that there is anything very original about the expert 
ences I have recorded, but I thought them worth pre° 
serving. Perhaps you would not agree with me in 
that belief." 

" If Number Five will give us a chance to form our 
own judgment about her dream or vision, I think we 
shall enjoy it," said the Mistress. " She knows what 
will please The Teacups in the way of reading as well 
as I do how many lumps of sugar the Professor wants 
in his tea and how many I want in mine." 

The company was so urgent that Number Five sent 
up-stairs for her paper. 

Number Five reads the sto7*y of her dream. 

It cost me a great effort to set down the words of 
the manuscript from which I am reading. My dreams 
for the most part fade away so soon after their occur- 
rence that I cannot recall them at all. But in this 
case my ideas held together with remarkable tenacity. 
By keeping my mind steadily upon the work, I gradu- 
ally unfolded the narrative which follows, as the fa- 
mous Italian antiquary opened one of those fragile 
carbonized manuscripts found in the ruins of Hercu= 
laneum or Pompeii. 

The first thing I remember about it is that I was 
floating upward, without any sense of effort on my 
part. The feeling was that of flying, which I have 
often had in dreams, as have many other persons. It 
was the most natural thing in the world, — a semi- 
materialized volition, if I may use such an expression. 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 57 

At the first moment of my new consciousness, — for I 
seemed to have just emerged from a deep slumber, — -» 
I was aware that there was a companion at my side. 
Nothing could be more gracious than the way in which 
this being accosted me. I will speak of it as sAe 9 be=> 
cause there was a delicacy, a sweetness, a divine pu- 
rity, about its aspect that recalled my ideal of the 
loveliest womanhood. 

" I am your companion and your guide," this being 
made me understand, as she looked at me. Some fac- 
ulty of which I had never before been conscious had 
awakened in me, and I needed no interpreter to ex- 
plain the unspoken language of my celestial attend- 
ant. 

" You are not yet outside of space and time," she 
said, " and I am going with you through some parts 
of the phenomenal or apparent universe, — what you 
call the material world. We have plenty of what you 
call time before us, and we will take our voyage lei- 
surely, looking at such objects of interest as may at- 
tract our attention as we pass. The first thing you 
will naturally wish to look at will be the earth you 
have just left. This is about the right distance," she 
said, and we paused in our flight. 

The great globe we had left was rolling beneath us. 
No eye of one in the flesh could see it as I saw or 
seemed to see it. No ear of any mortal being could 
hear the sounds that came from it as I heard or 
seemed to hear them. The broad oceans unrolled 
themselves before me. I could recognize the calm 
Pacific and the stormy Atlantic, — the ships that dot- 
ted them, the white lines where the waves broke on 
the shore, — frills on the robes of the continents, — so 
they looked to my woman's perception ; the vast 



58 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

South American forests ; the glittering icebergs about 
the poles ; the snowy mountain ranges, here and there 
a summit sending up fire and smoke ; mighty rivers, 
dividing provinces within sight of each other, and 
making neighbors of realms thousands of miles apart ; 
cities ; light-houses to insure the safety of sea-going 
vessels, and war-ships to knock them to pieces and 
sink them. All this, and infinitely more, showed it- 
self to me during a single revolution of the sphere : 
twenty-four hours it would have been, if reckoned by 
earthly measurements of time. I have not spoken of 
the sounds I heard while the earth was revolving un- 
der us. The howl of storms, the roar and clash of 
waves, the crack and crash of the falling thunder- 
bolt, — these of course made themselves heard as 
they do to mortal ears. But there were other sounds 
which enchained my attention more than these voices 
of nature. As the skilled leader of an orchestra 
hears every single sound from each member of the 
mob of stringed and wind instruments, and above all 
the screech of the straining soprano, so my sharpened 
perceptions made what would have been for common 
mortals a confused murmur audible to me as com- 
pounded of innumerable easily distinguished sounds. 
Above them all arose one continued, unbroken, ago- 
nizing cry. It was the voice of suffering womanhood, 
— a sound that goes up day and night, one long cho- 
rus of tortured victims. 

" Let us get out of reach of this," I said ; and we 
left our planet, with its blank, desolate moon staring 
at it, as if it had turned pale at the sights and sounds 
it had to witness. 

Presently the gilded dome of the State House, 
which marked our starting-point, came into view for 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 59 

the second time, and I knew that this side-show was 
over. I bade farewell to the Common with its Cogs- 
well fountain, and the Garden with its last awe-inspir- 
ing monument. 

" Oh, if I could sometimes revisit these beloved 
scenes ! " I exclaimed. 

" There is nothing to hinder that I know of," said 
my companion. " Memory and imagination as you 
know them in the flesh are two winged creatures with 
strings tied to their legs, and anchored to a bodily 
weight of a hundred and fifty pounds, more or less. 
When the string is cut you can he where you wish to 
be, — not merely a part of you, leaving the rest be- 
hind, but the whole of you. Why should n't you 
want to revisit your old home sometimes ? " 

I was astonished at the human way in which my 
guide conversed with me. It was always on the basis 
of my earthly habits, experiences, and limitations. 
" Your solar system, 9 ' she said, " is a very small part 
of the universe, but you naturally feel a curiosity 
about the bodies which constitute it and about their 
inhabitants. There is your moon : a bare and deso- 
late-looking place it is, and well it may be, for it has 
no respirable atmosphere, and no occasion for one. 
The Lunites do not breathe : they live without waste 
and without supply. You look as if you do not un- 
derstand this. Yet your people have, as you well 
know, what they call incandescent lights everywhere. 
You would have said there can be no lamp without oil 
or gas, or other combustible substance, to feed it ; and 
yet you see a filament which sheds a light like that of 
noon all around it, and does not waste at all. So the 
Lunites live by influx of divine energy, just as the 
incandescent lamp glows, — glows, and is not con- 



60 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

sumed ; receiving its life, if we may call it so, from 
the central power, which wears the unpleasant name 
of ' dynamo.' " 

The Lunites appeared to me as pale phosphorescent 
figures of ill-defined outline, lost in their own halos, as 
it were. I could not help thinking of Shelley's 

" maiden 
With white fire laden." 

But as the Lunites were after all but provincials, as 
are the tenants of all the satellites, I did not care to 
contemplate them for any great length of time. 

I do not remember much about the two planets that 
came next to our own, except the beautiful rosy atmos- 
phere of one and the huge bulk of the other. Pres- 
ently, we found ourselves within hailing distance of 
another celestial body, which I recognized at once, by 
the rings which girdled it, as the planet Saturn. A 
dingy, dull-looking sphere it was in its appearance. 
" We will tie up. here for a while, " said my attendant. 
The easy, familiar way in which she spoke surprised 
and pleased me. 

Why, said I, — The Dictator, — what is there to 
prevent beings of another order from being as cheer- 
ful, as social, as good companions, as the very liveliest 
of God's creatures whom we have known in the flesh ? 
Is it impossible for an archangel to smile ? Is such a 
phenomenon as a laugh never heard except in our little 
sinful corner of the universe ? Do you suppose, that 
when the disciples heard from the lips of their Master 
the play of words on the name of Peter, there was no 
smile of appreciation on the bearded faces of those 
holy men? From any other lips we should have called 
this pleasantry a — 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 61 

Number Five shook her head very slightly, and 
gave me a look that seemed to say, " Don't frighten 
the other Teacups. We don't call things by the 
names that belong to them when we deal with celestial 
subjects." 

"We tied up, as my attendant playfully called our 
resting, so near the planet that I could know — I' will 
not say see and hear, but apprehend — all that was 
going on in that remote sphere ; remote, as we who 
live in what we have been used to consider the centre 
of the rational universe regard it. What struck me 
at once was the deadness of everything I looked upon. 
Dead, uniform color of surface and surrounding at- 
mosphere. Dead complexion of all the inhabitants. 
Dead-looking trees, dead-looking grass, no flowers to 
be seen anywhere. 

" What is the meaning of all this ? " I said to my 
guide. 

She smiled good-naturedly, and replied, " It is a 
forlorn home for anything above a lichen or a toad- 
stool ; but that is no wonder, when you know what 
the air is which they breathe. It is pure nitrogen." 

The Professor spoke up. "That can't be, madam, " 
he said. " The spectroscope shows the atmosphere of 
Saturn to be — no matter, I have forgotten what ; but 
it was not pure nitrogen, at any rate." 

Number Five is never disconcerted. "Will you tell 
me, " she said, " where you have found any account of 
the bands and lines in the spectrum of dream-nitrogen? 
I should be so pleased to become acquainted with 
them." 

The Professor winced a little, and asked Delilah, 



62 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

the handmaiden, to pass a plate of muffins to him. 
The dream had carried him away, and he thought 
for the moment that he was listening to a scientific 
paper. 

Of course, my companion went on to say, the bodily 
constitution of the Saturnians is wholly different from 
thaf of air-breathing, that is oxygen-breathing, human 
beings. They are the dullest, slowest, most torpid of 
mortal creatures. 

All this is not to be wondered at when you remem- 
ber the inert characteristics of nitrogen. There are 
in some localities natural springs which give out slen- 
der streams of oxygen. You will learn by and by 
what use the Saturnians make of this dangerous gas, 
which, as you recollect, constitutes about one fifth of 
your own atmosphere. Saturn has large lead mines, 
but no other metal is found on this planet. The in- 
habitants have nothing else to make tools of, except 
stones and shells. The mechanical arts have there- 
fore made no great progress among them. Chopping 
down a tree with a leaden axe is necessarily a slow 
process. 

So far as the Saturnians can be said to have any 
pride in anything, it is in the absolute level which 
characterizes their political and social order. They 
profess to be the only true republicans in the solar 
system. The fundamental articles of their Constitu- 
tion are these : — 

All Saturnians are born equal, live equal, and die 
equal. 

All Saturnians are born free, — free, that is, to 
obey the rules laid down for the regulation of their 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 63 

conduct, pursuits, and opinions, free to be married to 
the person selected for them by the physiological sec- 
tion of the government, and free to die at such proper 
period of life as may best suit the convenience and 
general welfare of the community. 

The one great industrial product of Saturn is the 
bread-root. The Saturnians find this wholesome and 
palatable enough ; and it is well they do, as they have 
no other vegetable. It is what I should call a most 
uninteresting kind of eatable, but it serves as food and 
drink, having juice enough, so that they get along 
without water. They have a tough, dry grass, which, 
matted together, furnishes them with clothes suffi- 
ciently warm for their cold-blooded constitutions, and 
more than sufficiently ugly. 

A piece of ground large enough to furnish bread- 
root for ten persons is allotted to each head of a house- 
hold, allowance being made for the possible increase 
of families. This, however, is not a very important 
consideration, as the Saturnians are not a prolific race. 
The great object of life being the product of the 
largest possible quantity of bread-roots, and women 
not being so capable in the fields as the stronger sex, 
females are considered an undesirable addition to so- 
ciety. The one thing the Saturnians dread and abhor 
is inequality. The whole object of their laws and 
customs is to maintain the strictest equality in every- 
thing, — social relations, property, so far as they can 
be said to have anything which can be so called, mode 
of living, dress, and all other matters. It is their 
boast that nobody ever starved under their govern- 
ment. Nobody goes in rags, for the coarse-fibred 
grass from which they fabricate their clothes is very 



64 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

durable. (I confess I wondered how a woman could 
live in Saturn. They have no looking-glasses. There 
is no such article as a ribbon known among them. All 
their clothes are of one pattern. I noticed that there 
were no pockets in any of their garments, and learned 
that a pocket would be considered prima facie evi- 
dence of theft, as no honest person would have use for 
such a secret receptacle.) Before the revolution which 
established the great law of absolute and lifelong 
equality, the inhabitants used to feed at their own pri- 
vate tables. Since the regeneration of society all 
meals are taken in common. The last relic of bar- 
barism was the use of plates, — one or even more to 
each individual. This " odious relic of an effete civi- 
lization, " as they called it, has long been superseded 
by oblong hollow receptacles, one of which is allotted 
to each twelve persons. A great riot took place when 
an attempt was made by some fastidious and exclusive 
egotists to introduce partitions which should partially 
divide one portion of these receptacles into individual 
compartments. The Saturnians boast that they have 
no paupers, no thieves, none of those fictitious values 
called money, — all which things, they hear, are known 
in that small Saturn nearer the sun than the great 
planet which is their dwelling-place. 

" I suppose that now they have levelled everything 
they are quiet and contented. Have they any of those 
uneasy people called reformers ? " 

" Indeed they have," said my attendant. " There 
are the Orthobrachians, who declaim against the 
shameful abuse of the left arm and hand, and insist 
on restoring their perfect equality with the right. 
Then there are Isopodic societies, which insist on 
bringing back the original equality of the upper and 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 65 

lower limbs. If you can believe it, they actually prac- 
tise going on all fours, — generally in a private way, 
a few of them together, but hoping to bring the world 
round to them in the near future." 

Here I had to stop and laugh. 

"I should think life might be a little dull in Sat 
urn," I said. 

" It is liable to that accusation," she answered^ 
" Do you notice how many people you meet with their 
mouths stretched wide open ? " 

" Yes," I said, " and I do not know what to make 
of it. I should think every fourth or fifth person had 
his mouth open in that way." 

" They are suffering from the endemic disease of 
their planet, prolonged and inveterate gaping or yawn- 
ing, which has ended in dislocation of the lower jaw. 
After a time this becomes fixed, and requires a diffi- 
cult surgical operation to restore it to its place." 

It struck me that, in spite of their boast that they 
have no paupers, no thieves, no money, they were a 
melancholy-looking set of beiugs. 

" What are their amusements ? " I asked. 

M Intoxication and suicide are their chief recreations. 
They have a way of mixing the oxygen which issues 
in small jets from certain natural springs with their 
atmospheric nitrogen in the proportion of about twenty 
per cent, which makes very nearly the same thing as 
the air of your planet. But to the Saturnians the 
mixture is highly intoxicating, and is therefore a re- 
lief to the monotony of their every-day life. This 
mixture is greatly sought after, but hard to obtain, as 
the sources of oxygen are few and scanty. It shortens 
the lives of those who have recourse to it ; but if it 
takes too long, they have other ways of escaping from 



66 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

a life which cuts and dries everything for its miserable 
subjects, defeats all the natural instincts, confounds 
all individual characteristics, and makes existence such 
a colossal bore, as your worldly people say, that self- 
destruction becomes a luxury." 

Number Five stopped here. 

Your imaginary wholesale Shakerdom is all very 
fine, said I. Your Utopia, your New Atlantis, and 
the rest are pretty to look at. But your philosophers 
are treating the world of living souls as if they were, 
each of them, playing a game of solitaire, — all the 
pegs and all the holes alike. Life is a very different 
sort of game. It is a game of chess, and not of soli- 
taire, nor even of checkers. The men are not all pawns, 
but you have your knights, bishops, rooks, — yes, 
your king and queen, — - to be provided for. Not with 
these names, of course, but all looking for their proper 
places, and having their own laws and modes of action. 
You can play solitaire with the members of your own 
family for pegs, if you like, and if none of them rebel. 
You can play checkers with a little community of 
meek, like-minded people. But when it comes to the 
handling of a great state, you will find that nature has 
emptied a box of chessmen before you, and you must 
play with them so as to give each its proper move, 
or sweep them off the board, and come back to the 
homely game such as I used to see played with beans 
and kernels of corn on squares marked upon the back 
of the kitchen bellows. 

It was curious to see how differently Number Five's 
narrative was received by the different listeners in 
our circle. Number Five herself said she supposed 



Over the teacups. 67 

she ought to be ashamed of its absurdities, but she did 
not know that it was much sillier than dreams often 
are, and she thought it might amuse the company. 
She was herself always interested by these ideal pic= 
tures of society. But it seemed to her that life must 
be dull in any of them, and with that idea in her head 
her dreaming fancy had drawn these pictures. 

The Professor was interested in her conception of 
the existence of the Lunites without waste, and the 
death in life of the nitrogen-breathing Saturnians. 
Dream-chemistry was a new subject to him. Perhaps 
Number Five would give him some lessons in it. 

At this she smiled, and said she was afraid she could 
not teach him anything, but if he would answer a few 
questions in matter-of-fact chemistry which had puz- 
zled her she would be vastly obliged to him. 

" You must come to my laboratory," said the Pro- 
fessor. 

" I will come to-morrow," said Number Five. 

Oh, yes ! Much laboratory work they will do ! 
Play of mutual affinities. Amalgamates. No freezing 
mixtures, I '11 warrant ! 

Why should n't we get a romance out of all this, 
hey? 

But Number Five looks as innocent as a lamb, and 
as brave as a lion. She does not care a copper for the 
looks that are going round The Teacups. 

Our Doctor was curious about those cases of aw- 
chylosis, as he called it, of the lower jaw. He thought 
it a quite possible occurrence. Both the young girls 
thought the dream gave a very hard view of the opti- 
mists, who look forward to a reorganization of society 



68 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

which shall rid mankind of the terrible evils of over- 
crowding and competition. 

Number Seven was quite excited about the matter. 
He had himself drawn up a plan for a new social ar- 
rangement. He had shown it to the legal gentleman 
who has lately joined us. This gentleman thought it 
well-intended, but that it would take one constable to 
every three inhabitants to enforce its provisions. 

I said the dream could do no harm ; it was too out- 
rageously improbable to come home to anybody's feel- 
ings. Dreams were like broken mosaics, — the sepa- 
rated stones might here and there make parts of pic- 
tures. If one found a caricature of himself made out 
of the pieces which had accidentally come together, he 
would smile at it, knowing that it was an accidental 
effect with no malice in it. If any of you really be- 
lieve in a working Utopia, why not join the Shakers, 
and convert the world to this mode of life ? Celibacy 
alone would cure a great many of the evils you com- 
plain of. 

I thought this suggestion seemed to act rather un- 
favorably upon the ladies of our circle. The two 
Annexes looked inquiringly at each other. Number 
Five looked smilingly at them. She evidently thought 
it was time to change the subject of conversation, for 
she turned to me and said, " You promised to read us 
the poem you read before your old classmates the 
other evening." 

I will fulfill my promise, I said. We felt that this 
might probably be our last meeting as a Class. The 
personal reference is to our greatly beloved and hon* 
ored classmate, James Freeman Clarke. 



OYER THE TEACUPS 69 

AFTER THE CURFEW. 

The Play is over. While the light 

Yet lingers in the darkening- hall, 
I come to say a last Good-night 

Before the final Exeunt all. 

We gathered once, a joyous throng : 

The jovial toasts went gayly round ; 
With jest, and laugh, and shout, and song 

We made the floors and walls resound. 

We come with feeble steps and slow, 

A little hand of four or five, 
Left from the wrecks of long ago, 

Still pleased to find ourselves alive. 

Alive ! How living, too, are they 

Whose memories it is ours to share ! 
Spread the long table's full array, — 

There sits a ghost in every chair i 

One breathing form no more, alas ! 

Amid our slender group we see ; 
With him we still remained " The Class," -^ 

Without his presence what are we ? 

The hand we ever loved to clasp, — 

That tireless hand which knew no rest, — => 

Loosed from affection's clinging grasp, 
Lies nerveless on the peaceful breast. 

The beaming eye, the cheering voice, 

That lent to life a generous glow, 
Whose every meaning said " Rejoice," ■ 

We see, we hear, no more below. 

The air seems darkened by his loss, 

Earth's shadowed features look less fair, 

And heavier weighs the daily cross 
His willing shoulders helped us bear. 



Why mourn that we, the favored few 
Whom grasping Time so long has spared 



TO OVER THE TEACUPS. 

Life's sweet illusions to pursue, 

The common lot of age have shared ? 

In every pulse of Friendship's heart 
There breeds unf elt a throb of pain, — 

One hour must rend its links apart, 

Though years on years have forged the chain* 



So ends " The Boys," — a lifelong play. 

We too must hear the Prompter's call 
To fairer scenes and brighter day : 

Farewell ! I let the curtain fall. 






IV. 



If the reader thinks that all these talking Teacups 
came together by mere accident, as people meet at a 
boarding-house, I may as well tell him at once that he 
is mistaken. If he thinks I am going to explain how 
it is that he finds them thus brought together, — 
whether they form a secret association, whether they 
are the editors of this or that periodical, whether they 
are connected with some institution, and so on, — I 
must disappoint him. It is enough that he finds them 
in each other's company, a very mixed assembly, of 
different sexes, ages, and pursuits ; and if there is a 
certain mystery surrounds their meetings, he must not 
be surprised. Does he suppose we want to be known 
and talked about in public as " Teacups " ? No ; so 
far as we give to the community some records of the 
talks at our table our thoughts become public prop- 
erty, but the sacred personality of every Teacup must 
be properly respected. If any wonder at the presence 
of one of our number, whose eccentricities might seem 
to render him an undesirable associate of the company, 
he should remember that some people may have rela- 
tives whom they feel bound to keep their eye on ; be- 
sides, the cracked Teacup brings out the ring of the 
sound ones as nothing else does. Remember also that 
the soundest teacup does not always hold the best tea, 
nor the cracked teacup the worst. 

This is a hint to the reader, who is not expected to 



72 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

be too curious about the individual Teacups constitut- 
ing our unorganized association. 

The Dictator Discourses. 

I have been reading Balzac's JPeau de Chagrin. 
You have all read the story, I hope, for it is the first 
of his wonderful romances which fixed the eyes of the 
reading world upon him, and is a most fascinating if 
somewhat fantastic tale. A young man becomes the 
possessor of a certain magic skin, the peculiarity of 
which is that, while it gratifies every wish formed by 
its possessor, it shrinks in all its dimensions each time 
that a wish is gratified. The young man makes every 
effort to ascertain the cause of its shrinking ; invokes 
the aid of the physicist, the chemist, the student of 
natural history, but all in vain. He draws a red line 
around it. That same day he indulges a longing for 
a certain object. The next morning there is a little 
interval between the red line and the skin, close to 
which it was traced. So always, so inevitably. As 
he lives on, satisfying one desire, one passion, after 
another, the process of shrinking continues. A mor- 
tal disease sets in, which keeps pace with the shrink- 
ing skin, and his life and his talisman come to an end 
together. 

One would say that such a piece of integument was 
hardly a desirable possession. And yet, how many of 
us have at this very moment a peau de chagrin of our 
own, diminishing with every costly wish indulged, and 
incapable, like the magical one of the story, of being 
arrested in its progress ! 

Need I say that I refer to those coupon bonds, 
issued in the days of eight and ten per cent interest, 
and gradually narrowing as they drop their semi- 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 78 

annual slips of paper, which represent wishes to be 
realized, as the roses let fall their leaves in July, as 
the icicles melt away in the thaw of January ? 

How beautiful was the coupon bond, arrayed in its 
golden raiment of promises to pay at certain stated 
intervals, for a goodly number of coming years I 
What annual the horticulturist can show will bear 
comparison with this product of auricultural industry; 
which has flowered in midsummer and midwinter for 
twenty successive seasons ? And now the last of its 
blossoms is to be plucked, and the bare stem, stripped 
of its ever maturing and always welcome appendages, 
is reduced to the narrowest conditions of reproductive 
existence. Such is the fate of the financial peau de 
chagrin. Pity the poor fractional capitalist, who has 
just managed to live on the eight per cent of his cou- 
pon bonds. The shears of Atropos were not more 
fatal to human life than the long scissors which cut 
the last coupon to the lean proprietor, whose slice of 
dry toast it served to flatter with oleomargarine. Do 
you wonder that my thoughts took the poetical form, 
in the contemplation of these changes and their melan- 
choly consequences ? If the entire poem, of several 
hundred lines, was " declined with thanks " by an un- 
feeling editor, that is no reason why you should not 
hear a verse or two of it. 

THE PEAU DE CHAGRIN OF STATE STKEET, 

How beauteous is the bond 
In the manifold array 
Of its promises to pay, 
"While the eight per cent it gives 
And the rate at which one lives 
Correspond ! 



74 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

But at last the bough is bare 
Where the coupons one by one 
Through their ripening days have run, 
And the bond, a beggar now, 
Seeks investment anyhow, 
Anywhere ! 

The Mistress commonly contents herself with the 
general supervision of the company, only now and 
then taking an active part in the conversation. She 
started a question the other evening which set some of 
us thinking. 

" Why is it," she said, " that there is so common 
and so intense a desire for poetical reputation ? It 
seems to me that, if I were a man, I had rather have 
done something worth telling of than make verses 
about what other people had done." 

" You agree with Alexander the Great," said the 
Professor. " You would prefer the fame of Achilles 
to that of Homer, who told the story of his wrath and 
its direful consequences. I am afraid that I should 
hardly agree with you. Achilles was little better than 
a Choctaw brave. I won't quote Horace's line which 
characterizes him so admirably, for I will take it for 
granted that you all know it. He was a gentleman, 
— so is a first-class Indian, — a very noble gentleman 
in point of courage, lofty bearing, courtesy, but an 
unsoaped, ill-clad, turbulent, high-tempered young fel- 
low, looked up to by his crowd very much as the 
champion of the heavy weights is looked up to by his 
gang of blackguards. Alexander himself was not 
much better, — a foolish, fiery young madcap. How 
often is he mentioned except as a warning ? His best 
record is that he served to point a moral as ' Macedo* 
ilia's madman.' He made a figure, it is true, in Dry* 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 75 

den's great Ode, but what kind of a figure? He 
got drunk, — in very bad company, too, — and then 
turned fire-bug. He had one redeeming point, - — he 
did value his Homer, and slept with the Iliad under 
his pillow. A poet like Homer seems to me worth a 
dozen such fellows as Achilles and Alexander." 

" Homer is all very well for those that can read 
him," said Number Seven, " but the fellows that tag 
verses together nowadays are mostly fools. That's 
my opinion. I wrote some verses once myself, but I 
had been sick and was very weak ; had n't strength 
enough to write in prose, I suppose." 

This aggressive remark caused a little stir at our 
tea-table. For you must know, if I have not told you 
already, there are suspicions that we have more than 
one " poet " at our table. I have already confessed 
that I do myself indulge in verse now and then, and 
have given my readers a specimen of my work in that 
line. But there is so much difference of character in 
the verses which are produced at our table, without 
any signature, that I feel quite sure there are at least 
two or three other contributors besides myself. There 
is a tall, old-fashioned silver urn, a sugar-bowl of the 
period of the Empire, in which the poems sent to be 
read are placed by unseen hands. When the proper 
moment arrives, I lift the cover of the urn and take 
out any manuscript it may contain. If conversation 
is going on and the company are in a talking mood, I 
replace the manuscript or manuscripts, clap on the 
cover, and wait until there is a moment's quiet before 
taking it off again. I might guess the writers some= 
times by the handwriting, but there is more trouble 
taken to disguise the chirography than I choose to 
take to identify it as that of any particular member 
of our company. 



76 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

The turn the conversation took, especially the slash- 
ing onslaught of Number Seven on the writers of 
verse, set me thinking and talking about the matter. 
Number Five turned on the stream of my discourse 
by a question. 

" You receive a good many volumes of verse, do 
you not ? " she said, with a look which implied that 
she knew I did. 

I certainly do, I answered. My table aches with 

them. My shelves groan with them. Think of what 

a fuss Pope made about his trials, when he complained 

that 

" All Bedlam or Parnassus is let out " ! 

What were the numbers of the 

" Mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease " 

to that great multitude of contributors to our maga- 
zines, and authors of little volumes — sometimes, 
alas ! big ones — of verse, which pour out of the 
press, not weekly, but daily, and at such a rate of in- 
crease that it seems as if before long every hour 
would bring a book, or at least an article which is to 
grow into a book by and by ? 

I thanked Heaven, the other day, that I was not a 
critic. These attenuated volumes of poetry in fancy 
bindings open their covers at one like so many little 
unfledged birds, and one does so long to drop a worm 
in, — ■ a worm in the shape of a kind word for the 
poor fledgling ! But what a desperate business it is 
to deal with this army of candidates for immortality 1 
I have often had something to say about them, and I 
may be saying over the same things ; but if I do not 
remember what I have said, it is not very likely that 
my reader will ; if he does, he will find, I am very 
sure, that I say it a little differently. 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 77 

What astonishes me is that this enormous mass of 
commonplace verse, which burdens the postman who 
brings it. which it is a serious task only to get out of 
its wrappers and open in two or three places, is on the 
whole of so good an average quality. The dead level 
of mediocrity is in these days a table-land, a good 
deal above the old sea-level of laboring incapacity. 
Sixty years ago verses made a local reputation, which 
verses, if offered to-day to any of our first-class mag- 
azines, would go straight into the waste-basket. To 
write " poetry " was an art and mystery in which only 
a few noted men and a woman or two were experts. 

When •* Potter the ventriloquist," the predecessor 
of the well-remembered Signor Blitz, went round giv- 
ing his entertainments, there was something unex- 
plained, uncanny, almost awfid, and beyond dispute 
marvellous, in his performances. Those watches that 
disappeared and came back to their owners, those end- 
less supplies of treasures from empty hats, and es- 
pecially those crawling eggs that travelled all over the 
magician's person, sent many a child home thinking 
that Mr. Potter must have ghostly assistants, and 
raised grave doubts in the minds of " professors," that 
is members of the church, whether they had not com- 
promised their characters by being seen at such an un- 
hallowed exhibition. Nowadays, a clever boy who has 
made a study of parlor magic can do many of those 
tricks almost as well as the great sorcerer himself. 
How simple it all seems when we have seen the 
mechanism of the deception ! 

It is just so with writing in verse. It was not un- 
derstood that everybody can learn to make poetry, 
just as they can learn the more difficult tricks of jug- 
gling. M. Jourdain's discovery that he had been 



78 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

speaking and writing prose all his life is nothing to 
that of the man who finds out in middle life, or even 
later, that he might have been writing poetry all his 
days, if he had only known how perfectly easy and 
simple it is. Not everybody, it is true, has a suffi- 
ciently good ear, a sufficient knowledge of rhymes 
and capacity for handling them, to be what is called a 
poet. I doubt whether more than nine out of ten, in 
the average, have that combination of gifts required 
for the writing of readable verse. 

This last expression of opinion created a sensation 
among The Teacups. They looked puzzled for a 
minute. One whispered to the next Teacup, " More 
than nine out of ten ! I should think that was a 
pretty liberal allowance." 

Yes, I continued ; perhaps ninety-nine in a hundred 
would come nearer to the mark. I have sometimes 
thought I might consider it worth while to set up a 
school for instruction in the art. " Poetry taught in 
tivelve lessons." Congenital idiocy is no disqualifica- 
tion. Anybody can write " poetry." It is a most 
unenviable distinction to have published a thin vol- 
ume of verse, which nobody wanted, nobody buys, no- 
body reads, nobody cares for except the author, who 
cries over its pathos, poor fellow, and revels in its 
beauties, which he has all to himself. Come ! who 
will be my pupils in a Course, — Poetry taught in 
twelve lessons ? 

That made a laugh, in which most of The Teacups, 
myself included, joined heartily. Through it all I 
heard the sweet tones of Number Five's caressing 
voice ; not because it was more penetrating or louder 
than the others, for it was low and soft, but it was so 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 79 

different from the others, there was so much more 
life, — the life of sweet womanhood, — dissolved 
in it. 

(Of course he will fall in love with her. "He? 
Who?" Why, the new-comer, the Counsellor Did 
I not see his eyes turn toward her as the silvery notes 
rippled from her throat ? Did they not follow her in 
her movements, as she turned her head this or that 
way? 

— What nonsense for me to be arranging matters 
between two people strangers to each other before 
to-day !) 

" A fellow writes in verse when he has nothing to 
say, and feels too dull and silly to say it in prose," 
said Number Seven. 

This made us laugh again, good-naturedly. I was 
pleased with a kind of truth which it seemed to me to 
wrap up in its rather startling affirmation. I gave a 
piece of advice the other day which I said I thought 
deserved a paragraph to itself. It was from a letter 
I wrote not long ago to an unknown young corre- 
spondent, who had a longing for seeing himself in 
verse, but was not hopelessly infatuated with the idea 
that he was born a " poet." " When you write in 
prose," I said, " you say what you mean. When you 
write in verse you say what you mustT I was think- 
ing more especially of rhymed verse. Rhythm alone 
is a tether, and not a very long one. But rhymes are 
iron fetters ; it is dragging a chain and ball to march 
under their incumbrance ; it is a clog-dance you are 
figuring in, when you execute your metrical pas seuL 
Consider under what a disadvantage your thinking 
powers are laboring when you are handicapped by the 
inexorable demands of our scanty English rhyming 



80 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

vocabulary! You want to say something about the 
heavenly bodies, and you have a beautiful line ending 
with the word stars. Were you writing in prose, 
your imagination, your fancy, your rhetoric, your mu- 
sical ear for the harmonies of language, would all 
have full play. But there is your rhyme fastening 
you by the leg, and you must either reject the line 
which pleases you, or you must whip your hobbling 
fancy and all your limping thoughts into the traces 
which are hitched to one of three or four or half a 
dozen serviceable words. You cannot make any use 
of cars, I will suppose ; you have no occasion to talk 
about scars ; " the red planet Mars " has been used 
already ; Dibdin has said enough about the gallant 
tars ; what is there left for you but hars f So you 
give up your trains of thought, capitulate to necessity, 
and manage to lug in some kind of allusion, in place 
or out of place, which will allow you to make use of 
bars. Can there be imagined a more certain process 
for breaking up all continuity of thought, for taking 
out all the vigor, all the virility, which belongs to nat- 
ural prose as the vehicle of strong, graceful, sponta- 
neous thought, than this miserable subjugation of in- 
tellect to the clink of well or ill matched syllables ? 
I think you will smile if I tell you of an idea I have 
had about teaching the art of writing " poems " to the 
half-witted children at the Idiot Asylum. The trick 
of rhyming cannot be more usefully employed than in 
furnishing a pleasant amusement to the poor feeble- 
minded children. I should feel that I was well em- 
ployed in getting up a Primer for the pupils of the 
Asylum, and other young persons who are incapable of 
serious thought and connected expression. I would 
start in the simplest way ; thus : — 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 81 

When darkness veils the evening 

I love to close my weary .... 

The pupil begins by supplying the missing words, 
which most children who are able to keep out of fire 
and water can accomplish after a certain number of 
trials. When the poet that is to be has got so as to 
perform this task easily, a skeleton verse, in which 
two or three words of each line are omitted, is given 
the child to fill up. By and by the more difficult 
forms of metre are outlined, until at length a feeble- 
minded child can make out a sonnet, completely 
equipped with its four pairs of rhymes in the first sec- 
tion and its three pairs in the second part. 

Number Seven interrupted my discourse somewhat 
abruptly, as is his wont ; for we grant him a license, 
in virtue of his eccentricity, which we should hardly 
expect to be claimed by a perfectly sound Teacup. 

" That 's the way, — that 's the way ! " exclaimed 
he. " It 's just the same thing as my plan for teach- 
ing drawing." 

Some curiosity was shown among The Teacups to 
know what the queer creature had got into his head, 
and Number Five asked him, in her irresistible tones, 
if he would n't oblige us by telling us all about it. 

He looked at her a moment without speaking. I 
suppose he has often been made fun of, — slighted in 
conversation, taken as a butt for people who thought 
themselves witty, made to feel as we may suppose a 
cracked piece of china-ware feels when it is clinked in 
the company of sound bits of porcelain. I never saw 
him when he was carelessly dealt with in conversation, 

— for it would sometimes happen, even at our table, 

— without recalling some lines of Emerson which 
always struck me as of wonderful force and almost 
terrible truthfulness : ~ - 



82 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

" Alas ! that one is born in blight, 
Victim of perpetual slight : 
When thou lookest in his face 
Thy heart saith, ' Brother, go thy ways v . 
None shall ask thee what thou doest, 
Or care a rush for what thou knowest, 
Or listen when thou repliest, 
Or remember where thou liest, 
Or how thy supper is sodden ; J 
And another is born 
To make the sun forgotten." 

Poor fellow ! Number Seven has to bear a good deal 
in the way of neglect and ridicule, I do not doubt. 
Happily, he is protected by an amount of belief in 
himself which shields him from many assailants who 
would torture a more sensitive nature. But the sweet 
voice of Number Five and her sincere way of address- 
ing him seemed to touch his feelings. That was the 
meaning of his momentary silence, in which I saw 
that his eyes glistened and a faint flush rose on his 
cheeks. In a moment, however, as soon as he was on 
his hobby, he was all right, and explained his new and 
ingenious system as follows : — 

" A man at a certain distance appears as a dark 
spot, — nothing more. Good. Anybody, man, wo- 
man, or child, can make a dot, say a period, such as 
we use in writing. Lesson No. 1. Make a dot ; that 
is, draw your man, a mile off, if that is far enough. 
Now make him come a little nearer, a few rods, say. 
The dot is an oblong figure now. Good. Let your 
scholar draw the oblong figure. It is as easy as it 
is to make a note of admiration. Your man comes 
nearer, and now some hint of a bulbous enlargement 
at one end, and perhaps of lateral appendages and a 
bifurcation, begins to show itself. The pupil sets 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 83 

down with his pencil just what he sees, — - no more. 
So by degrees the man who serves as model approaches. 
A bright pupil will learn to get the outline of a hu- 
man figure in ten lessons, the model coming five hun- 
dred feet nearer each time. A dull one may require 
fifty, the model beginning a mile off, or more, and 
coming; a hundred feet nearer at each move." 

The company were amused by all this, but could 
not help seeing that there was a certain practical pos- 
sibility about the scheme. Our two Annexes, as we 
call them, appeared to be interested in the project, or 
fancy, or whim, or whatever the older heads might 
consider it. " I guess I '11 try it," said the American 
Annex. " Quite so," answered the English Annex. 
Why the first girl "guessed" about her own inten- 
tions it is hard to say. What " Quite so " referred to 
it would not be easy to determine. But these two 
expressions would decide the nationality of our two 
young ladies if we met them on the top of the great 
Pyramid. 

I was very glad that Number Seven had interrupted 
me. In fact, it is a good thing once in a while to 
break in upon the monotony of a steady talker at a 
dinner-table, tea-table, or any other place of social 
converse. The best talker is liable to become the 
most formidable of bores. It is a peculiarity of the 
bore that he is the last person to find himself out 
Many a terebrant I have known who, in that capacity s 
to borrow a line from Coleridge, 

" Was great, nor knew how great he was." 
A line, by the way, which, as I have remarked, has in 
it a germ like that famous " He builded better than 
he knew " of Emerson. 

There was a slight lull in the conversation. The 



84 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

Mistress, who keeps an eye on the course of things, 
and feared that one of those panic silences was im- 
pending, in which everybody wants to say something 
and does not know just what to say, begged me to go 
on with my remarks about the " manufacture " of 
" poetry." 

You use the right term, madam, I said. The man- 
ufacture of that article has become an extensive and 
therefore an important branch of industry. One musi 
be an editor, which I am not, or a literary confidant 
of a wide circle of correspondents, which I am, to 
have any idea of the enormous output of verse which 
is characteristic of our time. There are many curious 
facts connected with this phenomenon. Educated 
people — yes, and many who are not educated — have 
discovered that rhymes are not the private property 
of a few noted writers who, having squatted on that 
part of the literary domain some twenty or forty or 
sixty years ago, have, as it were, fenced it in with 
their touchy, barbed-wire reputations, and have come 
to regard it and cause it to be regarded as their pri- 
vate property. The discovery having been made that 
rhyme is not a paddock for this or that race-horse, but 
a common, where every colt, pony, and donkey can 
range at will, a vast irruption into that once-privileged 
inclosure has taken place. The study of the great 
invasion is interesting. 

Poetry is commonly thought to be the language of 
emotion. On the contrary, most of what is so called 
proves the absence of all passionate excitement. It is 
a cold-blooded, haggard, anxious, worrying hunt after 
rhymes which can be made serviceable, after images 
which will be effective, after phrases which are sono- 
rous ; all this under limitations which restrict the nat 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 85 

ural movements of fancy and imagination. There is 
a secondary excitement in overcoming the difficulties 
of rhythm and rhyme, no doubt, but this is not the 
emotional heat excited by the subject of the " poet's " 
treatment. True poetry, the best of it, is but the 
ashes of a burnt-out passion. The flame was in the 
eye and in the cheek, the coals may be still burning 
in the heart, but when we come to the words it leaves 
behind it, a little warmth, a cinder or two just glim- 
mering under the dead gray ashes, — that is. all we 
can look for. When it comes to the manufactured 
article, one is surprised to find how well the metrical 
artisans have learned to imitate the real thing. They 
catch all the phrases of the true poet. They imitate 
his metrical forms as a mimic copies the gait of the 
person he is representing. 

Now I am not going to abuse " these same metre 
ballad-mongers," for the obvious reason that, as all 
The Teacups know, I myself belong to the fraternity. 
I don't think that this reason should hinder my hav- 
ing my say about the ballad-mongering business. For 
the last thirty years I have been in the habit of re- 
ceiving a volume of poems or a poem, printed or man- 
uscript — I will not say daily, though I sometimes re- 
ceive more than one in a day, but at very short inter- 
vals. I have been consulted by hundreds of writers 
of verse as to the merit of their performances, and 
have often advised the writers to the best of my ability. 
Of late I have found it impossible to attempt to read 
critically all the literary productions, in verse and in 
prose, which have heaped themselves on every exposed 
surface of my library, like snowdrifts along the rail- 
road tracks, — blocking my literary pathway, so that 
I can hardly find my daily papers. 



86 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

What is the meaning of this rush into rhyming of 
such a multitude of people, of all ages, from the in- 
fant phenomenon to the oldest inhabitant ? 

Many of my young correspondents have told me in 
so many words, " I want to be famous." Now it is 
true that of all the short cuts to fame, in time of peace, 
there is none shorter than the road paved with rhymes. 
Byron woke up one morning and found himself fa- 
mous. Still more notably did Kouget de l'lsle fill the 
air of France, nay, the whole atmosphere of freedom 
all the world over, with his name wafted on the wings 
of the Marseillaise, the work of a single night. But 
if by fame the aspirant means having his name brought 
before and kept before the public, there is a much 
cheaper way of acquiring that kind of notoriety. Have 
your portrait taken as a " Wonderful Cure of a Des- 
perate Disease given up by all the Doctors." You 
will get a fair likeness of yourself and a partial bio- 
graphical notice, and have the satisfaction, if not of 
promoting the welfare of the community, at least that 
of advancing the financial interests of the benefactor 
whose enterprise has given you your coveted notoriety. 
If a man wants to be famous, he had much better try 
the advertising doctor than the terrible editor, whose 
waste-basket is a maw which is as insatiable as the 
temporary stomach of Jack the Giant-killer. 

" You must not talk so," said Number Five. " I 
know you don't mean any wrong to the true poets, 
but you might be thought to hold them cheap, whereas 
you value the gift in others, — in yourself too, I rather 
think. There are a great many women, — and some 
men, — who write in verse from a natural instinct 
which leads them to that form of expression. If you 
could peep into the portfolio of all the cultivated 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 87 

women among your acquaintances, you would be sur- 
prised, I believe, to see how many of them trust their 
thoughts and feelings to verse which they never think 
of publishing, and much of which never meets any 
eyes but their own. Don't be cruel to the sensitive 
natures who find a music in the harmonies of rhythm 
and rhyme which soothes their own souls, if it reaches 
no farther." 

I was glad that Number Five spoke up as she dido 
Her generous instinct came to the rescue of the poor 
poets just at the right moment. Not that I meant to 
deal roughly with them, but the " poets " I have been 
forced into relation with have impressed me with cer- 
tain convictions which are not flattering to the fra- 
ternity, and if my judgments are not accompanied by 
my own qualifications, distinctions, and exceptions, 
they may seem harsh to many readers. 

Let me draw a picture which many a young man 
and woman, and some no longer young, will recognize 
as the story of their own experiences. 

— He is sitting alone with his own thoughts and 
memories. What is that book he is holding ? Some- 
thing precious, evidently, for it is bound in " tree 
calf," and there is gilding enough about it for a birth- 
day present. The reader seems to be deeply absorbed 
in its contents, and at times greatly excited by what 
he reads ; for his face is flushed, his eyes glitter, and 
— there rolls a large tear down his cheek. Listen to 
him ; he is reading aloud in impassioned tones : — - 



And have I coined my soul in words for naught ? 
And must I, with the dim, forgotten throng 
Of silent ghosts that left no earthly trace 



88 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

To show they once had breathed this vital air, 
Die out of mortal memories ? 

His voice is choked by his emotion. " How is it pos« 
sible," he says to himself, " that any one can read my 
' Gaspings for Immortality ' without being impressed 
by their freshness, their passion, their beauty, their 
originality ? " Tears come to his relief freely, — so 
freely that he has to push the precious volume out of 
the range of their blistering shower. Six years ago 
" Gaspings for Immortality " was published, adver- 
tised, praised by the professionals whose business it is 
to boost their publishers' authors. A week and more 
it was seen on the counters of the booksellers and at 
the stalls in the railroad stations. Then it disap- 
peared from public view. A few copies still kept 
their place on the shelves of friends, — presentation 
copies, of course, as there is no evidence that any 
were disposed of by sale ; and now, one might as well 
ask for the lost books of Livy as inquire at a book- 
store for " Gaspings for Immortality." 

The authors of these poems are all round us, men 
and women, and no one with a fair amount of human 
sympathy in his disposition would treat them other- 
wise than tenderly. Perhaps they do not need tender 
treatment. How do you know that posterity may not 
resuscitate these seemingly dead poems, and give their 
author the immortality for which he longed aiad la- 
bored ? It is not every poet who is at once appreci- 
ated. Some will tell you that the best poets never 
are. Who can say that you, dear unappreciated 
brother or sister, are not one of those whom it is left 
for after times to discover among the wrecks of the 
past, and hold up to the admiration of the world ? 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 89 

I have not thought it necessary to put in all the in- 
terpellations, as the French call them, which broke 
the course of this somewhat extended series of re- 
marks ; but the comments of some of The Teacups 
helped me to shape certain additional observations, 
and may seem to the reader as of more significance 
than what I had been saying. 

Number Seven saw nothing but the folly and weak- 
ness of the " rhyming cranks," as he called them. 
He thought the fellow that I had described as blub- 
bering over his still-born poems would have been bet- 
ter occupied in earning his living in some honest way 
or other. He knew one chap that published a volume 
of verses, and let his wife bring up the wood for the 
fire by which he was writing. A fellow says, " I am 
a poet ! " and he thinks himself different from com- 
mon folks. He ought to be excused from military 
service. He might be killed, and the world would 
lose the inestimable products of his genius. " I be- 
lieve some of 'em think," said Number Seven, " that 
they ought not to be called upon to pay their taxes 
and their bills for household expenses, like the rest 
of us." 

" If they would only study and take to heart Hor- 
ace's ' Ars Poetica,' " said the Professor, " it would be 
a great benefit to them and to the world at large. I 
would not advise you to follow him too literally, of 
course, for, as you will see, the changes that have 
taken place since his time would make some of his 
precepts useless and some dangerous, but the spirit of 
them is always instructive. This is the way, some- 
what modernized and accompanied by my running 
commentary, in which he counsels a young poet : — 

" ' Don't try to write poetry, my boy, when you are 



90 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

not in the mood for doing it, — when it goes against 
the grain. You are a fellow of sense, — you under- 
stand all that. 

" ' If you have written anything which you think 

well of, show it to Mr. , the well-known critic ; 

to " the governor," as you call him, — your honored 
father ; and to me, your friend.' 

" To the critic is well enough, if you like to be over- 
hauled and put out of conceit with yourself, — it may 
do you good ; but I would n't go to ' the governor ' 
with my verses, if I were you. For either he will 
think what you have written is something wonderful, 
almost as good as he could have written himself, — in 
fact, he always did believe in hereditary genius, — or 
he will pooh-pooh the whole rhyming nonsense, and 
tell you that you had a great deal better stick to your 
business, and leave all the word-jingling to Mother 
Goose and her followers. 

" 4 Show me your verses,' says Horace. Very good 
it was in him, and mighty encouraging the first counsel 
he gives ! ' Keep your poem to yourself for some 
eight or ten years ; you will have time to look it over, 
to correct it and make it fit to present to the public' 

" ' Much obliged for your advice,' says the poor 
poet, thirsting for a draught of fame, and offered a 
handful of dust. And off he hurries to the printer, 
to be sure that his poem comes out in the next num= 
ber of the magazine he writes for." 

" Is not poetry the natural language of lovers ? " 

It was the Tutor who asked this question, and I 

thought he looked in the direction of Number Five, as 

if she might answer his question. But Number Five 

stirred her tea devotedly ; there was a lump of sugar, 



OYER THE TEACUPS. 91 

I suppose, that acted like a piece of marble. So there 
was a silence while the lump was slowly dissolving, 
and it was anybody's chance who saw fit to take up 
the conversation. 

The voice that broke the silence was not the sweet 9 
winsome one we were listening for, but it instantly 
arrested the attention of the company. It was the 
grave, manly voice of one used to speaking, and ac= 
customed to be listened to with deference. This was 
the first time that the company as a whole had heard 
it, for the speaker was the new-comer who has been 
repeatedly alluded to, — the one of whom I spoke as 
" the Counsellor." 

" I think I can tell you something about that, " said 
the Counsellor. " I suppose you will wonder how a 
man of my profession can know or interest himself 
about a question so remote from his arid pursuits. 
And yet there is hardly one man in a thousand who 
knows from actual experience a fraction of what I 
have learned of the lovers' vocabulary in my profes- 
sional experience. I have, I am sorry to say, had to 
take an important part in a great number of divorce 
cases. These have brought before me scores and hun- 
dreds of letters, in which every shade of the great 
passion has been represented. What has most struck 
me in these amatory correspondences has been their 
remarkable sameness. It seems as if writing love- 
letters reduced all sorts of people to the same level. 
I don't remember whether Lord Bacon has left us 
anything in that line, — unless, indeed, he wrote 
1 Romeo and Juliet ' and the ' Sonnets ; ' but if he has, 
I don't believe they differ so very much from those of 
his valet or his groom to their respective lady-loves. It 
is always, My darling ! my darling ! The words of 



92 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

endearment are the only ones the lover wants to em- 
ploy, and he finds the vocabulary too limited for his 
vast desires. So his letters are apt to be rather 
tedious except to the personage to whom they are ad- 
dressed. As to poetry, it is very common to find it 
in love-letters, especially in those that have no love in 
them. The letters of bigamists and polygamists are 
rich in poetical extracts. Occasionally, an original 
spurt in rhyme adds variety to an otherwise monoto- 
nous performance. I don't think there is much pas- 
sion in men's poetry addressed to women. I agree 
with The Dictator that poetry is little more than the 
ashes of passion ; still it may show that the flame has 
had its sweep where you find it, unless, indeed, it is 
shoveled in from another man's fireplace." 

" What do you say to the love poetry of women ? " 
asked the Professor. " Did ever passion heat words 
to incandescence as it did those of Sappho ? " 

The Counsellor turned, — not to Number Five, as 
he ought to have done, according to my programme, 
but to the Mistress. 

" Madam, " he said, " your sex is adorable in many 
ways, but in the abandon of a genuine love-letter it is 
incomparable. I have seen a string of women's love- 
letters, in which the creature enlaced herself about 
the object of her worship as that South American par- 
asite which clasps the tree to which it has attached 
itself, begins with a slender succulent network, feeds 
on the trunk, spreads its fingers out to hold firmly to 
one branch after another, thickens, hardens, stretches 
in every direction, following the boughs, and at length 
gets strong enough to hold in its murderous arms, 
high up in air, the stump and shaft of the once sturdy 
growth that was its support and subsistence." 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 93 

The Counsellor did not say all this quite so formally 
as I have set it down here, but in a much easier way. 
In fact, it is impossible to smooth out a conversation 
from memory without stiffening it ; you can't have 
a dress shirt look quite right without starching the 
bosom. 

Some of us would have liked to hear more about 
those letters in the divorce cases, but the Counsellor 
had to leave the table. He promised to show us some 
pictures he has of the South American parasite. I 
have seen them, and I can assure you they are very 
curious. 

The following verses were found in the urn, or 
sugar-bowl. 

CACOETHES SCRIBENDI. 

If all the trees in all the woods were men, 

And each and every blade of grass a pen ; 

If every leaf on every shrub and tree 

Turned to a sheet of foolscap ; every sea 

Were changed to ink, and all earth's living tribes 

Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, 

And for ten thousand ages, day and night, 

The human race should write, and write, and write, 

Till all the pens and paper were used up, 

And the huge inkstand was an empty cup, 

Still would the scribblers clustered round its brink 

Call for more pens, more paper, and more ink. 



" Dolce, ma non troppo dolce" said the Professor 
to the Mistress, who was sweetening his tea. She 
always sweetens his and mine for us. He has been 
attending a series of concerts, and borrowed the form 
of the directions to the orchestra. " Sweet, but not 
too sweet," he said, translating the Italian for the 
benefit of any of the company who might not be lin- 
guists or musical experts. 

" Do you go to those musical hullabaloos ? " called 
out Number Seven. There was something very much 
like rudeness in this question and the tone in which it 
was asked. But we are used to the outbursts, and ex- 
travagances, and oddities of Number Seven, and do 
not take offence at his rough speeches as we should if 
any other of the company uttered them. 

" If you mean the concerts that have been going on 
this season, yes, I do," said the Professor, in a bland, 
good-humored way. 

" And do you take real pleasure in the din of all 
those screeching and banging and growling instru- 
ments ? " 

" Yes," he answered, modestly, " I enjoy the brou* 
Jiaha, if you choose to consider it such, of all this 
quarrelsome menagerie of noise-making machines, 
brought into order and harmony by the presiding 
genius, the leader, who has made a happy family of 
these snarling stringed instruments and whining wind 
instruments, so that although 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 95 

Linguce centum sunt, oraque centum, 

notwithstanding there are a hundred vibrating tongues 
and a hundred bellowing mouths, their one grand 
blended and harmonized uproar sets all my fibres 
tingling with a not unpleasing tremor." 

" Do you understand it ? Do you take any idea 
from it ? Do you know what it all means ? " said 
Xumber Seven. 

The Professor was loncr-sufferins: under this series 
of somewhat peremptory questions. He replied very 
placidly, " I am afraid I have but a superficial out- 
side acquaintance with the secrets, the unfathomable 
mysteries, of music. I can no more conceive of the 
working conditions of the great composer, 

' UntTvisting- all the chains that tie 
The hidden soul of harmony,' 

than a child of three years can follow the reasonings 
of Xewton's ' Principia.' I do not even pretend that 
I can appreciate the work of a great master as a born 
and trained musician does. Still, I do love a great 
crash of harmonies, and the oftener I listen to these 
musical tempests the higher my soul seems to ride 
upon them, as the wild fowl I see through my window 
soar more freely and fearlessly the fiercer the storm 
with which they battle." 

•• That "s all very well," said Xumber Seven, " but I 
wish we could get the old-time music back again. 
You ought to have heard, — no. I won't mention her, 
— dead, poor girl, — dead and singing with the saints 

in heaven, — but the S girls. If you could have 

heard them as I did when I was a boy, you would 
have cried, as we all used to. Do you cry at those 
great musical smashes ? How can you cry when you 
don't know what it is all about ? We used to think 



96 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

the words meant something, — we fancied that Burns 
and Moore said some things very prettily. I suppose 
you 've outgrown all that." 

No one can handle Number Seven in one of his 
tantrums half so well as Number Five can do it. She 
can pick out what threads of sense may be wound off 
from the tangle of his ideas when they are crowded 
and confused, as they are apt to be at times. She 
can soften the occasional expression of half-concealed 
ridicule with which the poor old fellow's sallies are 
liable to be welcomed — or un welcomed. She knows 
that the edge of a broken teacup may be sharper, 
very possibly, than that of a philosopher's jackknife. 
A mind a little off its balance, one which has a slightly 
squinting brain as its organ, will often prove fertile 
in suggestions. Vulgar, cynical, contemptuous listen- 
ers fly at all its weaknesses, and please themselves 
with making light of its often futile ingenuities, when 
a wiser audience would gladly accept a hint which 
perhaps could be developed in some profitable direc- 
tion, or so interpret an erratic thought that it should 
prove good sense in disguise. That is the way Num- 
ber Five was in the habit of dealing with the ex- 
plosions of Number Seven. Do you think she did not 
see the ridiculous element in a silly speech, or the 
absurdity of an outrageously extravagant assertion? 
Then you never heard her laugh when she could give 
way to her sense of the ludicrous without wounding 
the feelings of any other person. But her kind heart 
never would forget itself, and so Number Seven had a 
champion who was always ready to see that his flashes 
of intelligence, fitful as they were, and liable to be 
streaked with half-crazy fancies, always found one 
willing recipient of what light there was in them. 






OVER THE TEACUPS. 97 

Number Five, I have found, is a true lover of music, 
and has a right to claim a real knowledge of its higher 
and deeper mysteries. But she accepted very cordially 
what our light-headed companion said about the songs 
he used to listen to. 

" There is no doubt," she remarked, " that the tears 
which used to be shed over ' Oft in the stilly night,' or 
s Auld .Robin Gray,' or 4 A place in thy memory, dear- 
est,' were honest tears, coming from the true sources 
of emotion. There was no affectation about them ; 
those songs came home to the sensibilities of young 
people, — of all who had any sensibilities to be acted 
upon. And on the other hand, there is a great amount 
of affectation in the apparent enthusiasm of many per- 
sons in admiring and applauding music of which they 
have not the least real appreciation. They do not 
know whether it is good or bad, the work of a first-rate 
or a fifth-rate composer ; whether there are coherent 
elements in it, or whether it is nothing more than ' a 
concourse of sweet sounds ' with no organic connec- 
tions. One must be educated, no doubt, to understand 
the more complex and difficult kinds of musical com- 
position. Go to the great concerts where you know 
that the music is good, and that you ought to like it 
whether you do or not Take a music-bath once or 
twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that 
it is to the soul what the water-bath is to the body. 
I wouldn't trouble myself about the affectations of 
people who go to this or that series of concerts chiefly 
because it is fashionable. Some of these people whom 
we think so silly and hold so cheap will perhaps find, 
sooner or later, that they have a dormant faculty which 
is at last waking up, and that they who came because 
others came, and began by staring at the audience, 



98 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

are listening with a newly found delight. Every one 
of us has a harp under bodice or waistcoat, and if it 
can only once get properly strung and tuned it will 
respond to all outside harmonies." 

The Professor has some ideas about music, which I 
believe he has given to the world in one form or an- 
other ; but the world is growing old and forgetful, and 
needs to be reminded now and then of what one has 
formerly told it. 

" I have had glimpses," the Professor said, " of the 
conditions into which music is capable of bringing a 
sensitive nature. Glimpses, I say, because I cannot 
pretend that I am capable of sounding all the depths 
or reaching all the heights to which music may trans- 
port our mortal consciousness. Let me remind you 
of a curious fact with reference to the seat of the mu- 
sical sense. Far down below the great masses of 
thinking marrow and its secondary agents, just as the 
brain is about to merge in the spinal cord, the roots 
of the nerve of hearing spread their white filaments 
out into the sentient matter, where they report what 
the external organs of hearing tell them. This sen- 
tient matter is in remote connection only with the 
mental organs, far more remote than the centres of 
the sense of vision and that of smell. In a word, the 
musical faculty might be said to have a little brain of 
its own. It has a special world and a private language 
all to itself. How can one explain its significance to 
those whose musical faculties are in a rudimentary 
state of development, or who have never had them 
trained? Can you describe in intelligible language 
the smell of a rose as compared with that of a violet ? 
No, — ■ music can be translated only by music. Just 
so far as it suggests worded thought, it falls short of 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 99 

its highest office. Pure emotional movements of the 
spiritual nature, — that is what I ask of music. Music 
will be the universal language, — the Volapilk of 
spiritual being." 

" Angels sit down with their harps and play at eaclx 
other, I suppose," said Number Seven. " Must have 
an atmosphere up there if they have harps, or they 
would n't get any music. Wonder if angels breathe 
like mortals ? If they do, they must have lungs and 
air passages, of course. Think of an angel with the 
influenza, and nothing but a cloud for a handker- 
chief ! " 

— This is a good instance of the way in which 
Number Seven's squinting brain works. You will 
now and then meet just such brains in heads you know 
very well. Their owners are much given to asking- 
unanswerable questions. A physicist may settle it for 
us whether there is an atmosphere about a planet or 
not, but it takes a brain with an extra fissure in it to 
ask these unexpected questions, — questions which the 
natural philosopher cannot answer, and which the 
theologian never thinks of asking. 

The company at our table do not keep always in the 
same places. The first thing I noticed, the other even- 
ing, was that the Tutor was sitting between the two 
Annexes, and the Counsellor was next to Number 
Five. Something ought to come of this arrangement. 
One of those two young ladies must certainly captivate 
and perhaps capture the Tutor. They are just the 
age to be falling in love and to be fallen in love with 
The Tutor is good looking, intellectual, suspected of 
writing poetry, but a little shy, it appears to me. I 
am glad to see him between the two girls. If there 



100 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

were only one, she might be shy too, and then there 
would be less chance for a romance such as I am on 
the lookout for ; but these young persons lend courage 
to each other, and between them, if he does not wake 
up like Cymon at the sight of Iphigenia, I shall be 
disappointed. As for the Counsellor and Number 
Five, they will soon find each other out. Yes, it is all 
pretty clear in my mind, — except that there is always 
an x in a problem where sentiments are involved. No, 
not so clear about the Tutor. Predestined, I venture 
my guess, to one or the other, but to which f I will 
suspend my opinion for the present. 

I have found out that the Counsellor is a childless 
widower. I am told that the Tutor is unmarried, and 
so far as known not engaged. There is no use in 
denying it, — a company without the possibility of a 
love-match between two of its circle is like a cham- 
pagne bottle with the cork out for some hours as com- 
pared to one with its pop yet in reserve. However, if 
there should be any love-making, it need not break up 
our conversations. Most of it will be carried on away 
from our tea-table. 

Some of us have been attending certain lectures on 
Egypt and its antiquities. I have never been on the 
Nile. If in any future state there shall be vacations 
in which we may have liberty to revisit our old home, 
equipped with a complete brand-new set of mortal 
senses as our travelling outfit, I think one of the first 
places I should go to, after my birthplace, the old gam= 
brel-roof ed house, — the place where it stood, rather, 
• — would be that mighty, awe-inspiring river. I do 
not suppose we shall ever know half of what we owe 
to the wise and wonderful people who confront us with 



OYER THE TEACUPS. 101 

the overpowering monuments of a past which flows 
out of the unfathomable darkness as the great river 
streams from sources even as yet but imperfectly ex- 
plored. 

I have thought a good deal about Egypt, lately, with 
reference to our historical monuments. How did the 
great unknown masters who fixed the two leading 
forms of their monumental records arrive at those 
admirable and eternal types, the pyramid and the obe- 
lisk ? How did they get their model of the pyramid ? 

Here is an hour-glass, not inappropriately filled 
with sand from the great Egyptian desert. I turn it, 
and watch the sand as it accumulates in the lower half 
of the glass. How symmetrically, how beautifully, 
how inevitably, the little particles pile up the cone, 
which is ever building and unbuilding itself, always 
aiming at the stability which is found only at a certain 
fixed angle ! The Egyptian children playing in the 
sand must have noticed this as they let the grains fall 
from their hands, and the sloping sides of the minia- 
ture pyramid must have been among the familiar 
sights to the little boys and girls for whom the sand 
furnished their earliest playthings. Nature taught 
her children through the working of the laws of grav- 
itation how to build so that her forces should act in 
harmony with art, to preserve the integrity of a struc- 
ture meant to reach a far-off posterity. The pyramid 
is only the cone in which Nature arranges her heaped 
and sliding fragments ; the cone with flattened sur- 
faces, as it is prefigured in certain well-known crystal- 
line forms. The obelisk is from another of Nature'^ 
patterns : it is only a gigantic acicular crystal. 

The Egyptians knew what a monument should be, 
simple, noble, durable. It seems to me that we 



102 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

Americans might take a lesson from those early archi- 
tects. Our cemeteries are crowded with monuments 
which are very far from simple, anything but noble, 
and stand a small chance of being permanent. The 
pyramid is rarely seen, perhaps because it takes up so 
much room 5 and when built on a small scale seems 
insignificant as we think of it, dwarfed by the vast 
structures of antiquity. The obelisk is very common, 
and when in just proportions and of respectable di- 
mensions is unobjectionable. 

But the gigantic obelisks like that on Bunker Hill, 
and especially the Washington monument at the na- 
tional capital, are open to critical animadversion. Let 
us contrast the last mentioned of these great piles 
with the obelisk as the Egyptian conceived and exe- 
cuted it. The new Pharaoh ordered a memorial of 
some important personage o^ event. In the first 
place, a mighty stone was dislodged from its connec- 
tions, and lifted, unbroken, from the quarry. This 
was a feat from which our modern stone-workers 
shrink dismayed. The Egyptians appear to have 
handled these huge monoliths as our artisans handle 
hearthstones and doorsteps, for the land actually bris- 
tled with such giant columns. They were shaped and 
finished as nicely as if they were breastpins for the 
Titans to wear, and on their polished surfaces were 
engraved in imperishable characters the records they 
were erected to preserve. 

Europe and America borrow these noble produc- 
tions of African art and power, and find them hard 
enough to handle after they have succeeded in trans- 
porting them to Rome, or London, or New York 
Their simplicity, grandeur, imperishability, speaking 
symbolism, shame all the pretentious and fragile 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 103 

works of human art around them. The obelisk has 
no joints for the destructive agencies of nature to 
attack ; the pyramid has no masses hanging in unsta- 
ble equilibrium, and threatening to fall by their own 
weight in the course of a thousand or two years. 

America says the Father of his Country must have 
a monument worthy of his exalted place in history. 
What shall it be ? A temple such as Athens might 
have been proud to rear upon her Acropolis ? An 
obelisk such as Thebes might have pointed out with 
pride to the strangers who found admission through 
her hundred gates ? After long meditation and the 
rejection of the hybrid monstrosities with which the 
nation was menaced, an obelisk is at last decided 
upon. How can it be made grand and dignified 
enough to be equal to the office assigned it? We 
dare not attempt to carve a single stone from the liv- 
ing rock, — all our modern appliances fail to make 
the task as easy to us as it seems to have been to the 
early Egyptians. No artistic skill is required in giv- 
ing a four-square tapering figure to a stone column. 
If we cannot shape a solid obelisk of the proper di- 
mensions, we can build one of separate blocks. How 
can we give it the distinction we demand for it ? The 
nation which can brag that it has " the biggest show 
on earth " cannot boast a great deal in the way of 
architecture, but it can do one thing, — it can build 
an obelisk that shall be taller than any structure now 
standing which the hand of man has raised. Build 
an obelisk ! How different the idea of such a struc- 
ture from that of the unbroken, unjointed prismatic 
shaft, one perfect whole, as complete in itself, as fitly 
shaped and consolidated to defy the elements, as the 
towering palm or the tapering pine ! Well, we had 



104 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

the satisfaction for a time of claiming the tallest 
structure in the world ; and now that the new Tower 
of Babel which has sprung up in Paris has killed that 
pretention, I think we shall feel and speak more 
modestly about our stone hyperbole, our materializa-= 
tion of the American love of the superlative. We 
have the higher civilization among us, and we must try 
to keep down the forthputting instincts of the lower. 
We do not want to see our national monument pla- 
carded as " the greatest show on earth," — perhaps it 
is well that it is taken down from that bad eminence. 

I do not think that this speech of mine was very well 
received. It appeared to jar somewhat on the nerves 
of the American Annex. There was a smile on the lips 
of the other Annex, — the English girl, — ■ which she 
tried to keep quiet, but it was too plain that she en- 
joyed my diatribe. 

It must be remembered that I and the other Tea- 
cups, in common with the rest of our fellow-citizens, 
have had our sensibilities greatly worked upon, our 
patriotism chilled, our local pride outraged, by the 
monstrosities which have been allowed to deform our 
beautiful public grounds. We have to be very care- 
ful in conducting a visitor, say from his marble-fronted 
hotel to the City Hall. — Keep pretty straight along 
after entering the Garden, — you will not care to in- 
spect the little figure of the military gentleman to your 
right. — Yes, the Cochituate water is drinkable, but I 
think I would not turn aside to visit that small fabric 
which makes believe it is a temple, and is a weak-eyed 
fountain feebly weeping over its own insignificance. 
About that other stone misfortune, cruelly reminding 
us of the " Boston Massacre," we will not discourse j 
it is not imposing, and is rarely spoken of. 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 105 

What a mortification to the inhabitants of a city 
with some hereditary and contemporary claims to cul- 
tivation ; which has noble edifices, grand libraries, 
educational institutions of the highest grade, an art- 
gallery filled with the finest models and rich in paint- 
ings and statuary, — a stately city that stretches 
both arms across the Charles to clasp the hands of 
Harvard, her twin-sister, each lending lustre to the 
other like double stars, — what a pity that she should 
be so disfigured by crude attempts to adorn her and 
commemorate her past that her most loving children 
blush for her artificial deformities amidst the wealth 
of her natural beauties ! One hardly knows which to 
groan over most sadly, — the tearing down of old 
monuments, the shelling of the Parthenon, the over- 
throw of the pillared temples of Rome, and in a hum- 
bler way the destruction of the old Hancock house, or 
the erection of monuments which are to be a perpetual 
eyesore to ourselves and our descendants. 

We got talking on the subject of realism, of which 
so much has been said of late. 

It seems to me, I said, that the great additions which 
have been made by realism to the territory of litera- 
ture consist largely in swampy, malarious, ill-smelling 
patches of soil which had previously been left to rep- 
tiles and vermin. It is perfectly easy to be original 
by violating the laws of decency and the canons of 
good taste. The general consent of civilized people 
was supposed to have banished certain subjects from 
the conversation of well-bred people and the pages of 
respectable literature. There is no subject, or hardly 
any, which may not be treated of at the proper time, 
in the proper place, by the fitting person, for the right 



106 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

kind of listener or reader. But when the poet or the 
story-teller invades the province of the man of science, 
he is on dangerous ground. I need say nothing of the 
blunders he is pretty sure to make. The imaginative 
writer is after effects. The scientific man is after 
truth. Science is decent, modest ; does not try to 
startle, but to instruct. The same scenes and objects 
which outrage every sense of delicacy in the story- 
teller's highly colored paragraphs can be read without 
giving offence in the chaste language of the physiolo- 
gist or the physician. 

There is a very celebrated novel, " Madame Bovary," 
the work of M. Flaubert, which is noted for having 
been the subject of prosecution as an immoral work. 
That it has a serious lesson there is no doubt, if one 
will drink down to the bottom of the cup. But the 
honey of sensuous description is spread so deeply over 
the surface of the goblet that a large proportion of its 
readers never think of its holding anything else. All 
the phases of unhallowed passion are described in full 
detail. That is what the book is bought and read for, 
by the great majority of its purchasers, as all but sim- 
pletons very well know. That is what makes it sell 
and brought it into the courts of justice. This book 
is famous for its realism ; in fact, it is recognized as 
one of the earliest and most brilliant examples of that 
modern style of novel which, beginning where Balzac 
left off, attempted to do for literature what the photo- 
graph has done for art. For those who take the 
trouble to drink out of the cup below the rim of honey, 
there is a scene where realism is carried to its ex- 
treme, — surpassed in horror by no writer, unless it 
be the one whose name must be looked for at the bot- 
tom of the alphabet, as if its natural place were as low 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 107 

down in the dregs of realism as it could find itselfc 
This is the death-bed scene, where Madame Bovary 
expires in convulsions. The author must have visited 
the hospitals for the purpose of watching the terrible 
agonies he was to depict, tramping from one bed to 
another until he reached the one where the cries and 
contortions were the most frightful. Such a scene he 
has reproduced. No hospital physician would have 
pictured the struggle in such colors. In the same 
way, that other realist, M. Zola, has painted a patient 
suffering from delirium tremens, the disease known to 
common speech as " the horrors." In describing this 
case he does all that language can do to make it more 
horrible than the reality. He gives us, not realism, 
but super-realism, if such a term does not contradict 
itself. 

In this matter of the literal reproduction of sights 
and scenes which our natural instinct and our better 
informed taste and judgment teach us to avoid, art 
has been far in advance of literature. It is three hun- 
dred years since Joseph Eibera, more commonly known 
as Spagnoletto, was born in the province Valencia, in 
Spain. We had the misfortune of seeing a painting 
of his in a collection belonging to one of the French 
princes, and exhibited at the Art Museum. It was 
that of a man performing upon himself the operation 
known to the Japanese as hara-kiri. Many persons 
who looked upon this revolting picture will never get 
rid of its remembrance, and will regret the day when 
their eyes fell upon it. I should share the offence of 
the painter if I ventured to describe it. Ribera was 
fond of depicting just such odious and frightful sub- 
jects. " Saint Lawrence writhing on his gridiron, 
Saint Sebastian full of arrows, were equally a source 



108 OVEK THE TEACUPS. 

of delight to him. Even in subjects which had no 
such elements of horror he finds the materials for the 
delectation of his ferocious pencil ; he makes up for 
the defect by rendering with a brutal realism deform- 
ity and ugliness." 

The first great mistake made by the ultra-realists 9 
like Flaubert and Zola, is, as I have said, their ignor- 
ing the line of distinction between imaginative art 
and science. We can find realism enough in books 
of anatomy, surgery, and medicine. In studying the 
human figure, we want to see it clothed with its nat- 
ural integuments. It is well for the artist to study the 
ecorche in the dissecting-room, but we do not want the 
Apollo or the Venus to leave their skins behind them 
when they go into the gallery for exhibition. Lan- 
cisi's figures show us how the great statues look when 
divested of their natural covering. It is instructive, 
but useful chiefly as a means to aid in the true artistic 
reproduction of nature. When the hospitals are in- 
vaded by the novelist, he should learn something from 
the physician as well as from the patients. Science 
delineates in monochrome. She never uses high tints 
and strontian lights to astonish lookers-on. Such 
scenes as Flaubert and Zola describe would be repro- 
duced in their essential characters, but not dressed up 
in picturesque phrases. That is the first stumbling- 
block in the way of the reader of such realistic stories 
as those to which I have referred. There are subjects 
which must be investigated by scientific men which 
most educated persons would be glad to know nothing 
about. When a realistic writer like Zola surprises 
his reader into a kind of knowledge he never thought 
of wishing for, he sometimes harms him more than he 
has any idea of doing. He wants to produce a sensa* 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 109 

tion, and he leaves a permanent disgust not to be got 
rid of. Who does not remember odious images that 
can never be washed out from the consciousness which 
they have stained? A man's vocabulary is terribly 
retentive of evil words, and the images they present 
cling to his memory and will not loose their hold. 
One who has had the mischance to soil his mind by 
reading certain poems of Swift will never cleanse it to 
its original whiteness. Expressions and thoughts of a 
certain character stain the fibre of the thinking organ, 
and in some degree affect the hue of every idea that 
passes through the discolored tissues. 

This is the gravest accusation to bring against real- 
ism, old or recent, whether in the brutal paintings of 
Spagnoletto or in the unclean revelations of Zola. 
Leave the description of the drains and cesspools to 
the hygienic specialist, the painful facts of disease to 
the physician, the details of the laundry to the washer- 
woman. If we are to have realism in its tedious 
descriptions of unimportant particulars, let it be of 
particulars which do not excite disgust. Such is the 
description of the vegetables in Zola's " Ventre de 
Paris, " where, if one wishes to see the apotheosis of 
turnips, beets, and cabbages, he can find them glori- 
fied as supremely as if they had been symbols of so 
many deities ; their forms, their colors, their expres- 
sion, worked upon until the\ seem as if they were 
made to be looked at and worshipped rather than to 
be boiled and eaten. 

I am pleased to find a French critic of M. Flaubert 
expressing ideas with which many of my own entirely 
coincide. " The great mistake of the realists, " he 
says, " is that they profess to tell the truth because 
they tell everything. This puerile hunting after de- 



110 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

tails, this cold and cynical inventory of all the wretched 
conditions in the midst of which poor humanity vege- 
tates, not only do not help us to understand it better, 
but, on the contrary, the effect on the spectators is a 
kind of dazzled confusion mingled with fatigue and dis- 
gust. The material truthfulness to which the school of 
M. Flaubert more especially pretends misses its aim 
in going beyond it. Truth is lost in its own excess." 

I return to my thoughts on the relations of imagi- 
native art in all its forms with science. The subject 
which in the hands of the scientific student is han- 
dled decorously, — reverently, we might almost say, 
— becomes repulsive, shameful, and debasing in the 
unscrupulous manipulations of the low-bred man of 
letters. 

I confess that I am a little jealous of certain tend- 
encies in our own American literature, which led one 
of the severest and most outspoken of our satirical 
fellow-countrymen, no longer living to be called to 
account for it, to say, in a moment of bitterness, that 
the mission of America was to vulgarize mankind. I 
myself have sometimes wondered at the pleasure some 
Old World critics have professed to find in the most 
lawless freaks of New World literature. I have ques- 
tioned whether their delight was not like that of the 
Spartans in the drunken antics of their Helots. But 
I suppose I belong to another age, and must not at- 
tempt to judge the present by my old-fashioned stand- 
ards. 

The company listened very civilly to these remarks, 
whether they agreed with them or not. I am not 
sure that I want all the young people to think just as 
I do in matters of critical judgment. New wine does 



OYER THE TEACUPS. Ill 

not go well into old bottles, but if an old cask has 
held good wine, it may improve a crude juice to stand 
awhile upon the lees of that which once filled it. 

I thought the company had had about enough of 
this disquisition. They listened very decorously, and 
the Professor, who agrees very well with me, as 1 hap- 
pen to know, in my views on this business of realism, 
thanked me for giving them the benefit of my opin- 
ion. 

The silence that followed was broken by Number 
Seven's suddenly exclaiming, — 

" I should like to boss creation for a week ! " 

This expression was an outbreak suggested by some 
train of thought which Number Seven had been fol- 
lowing while I was discoursing. I do not think one 
of the company looked as if he or she were shocked 
by it as an irreligious or even profane speech. It is 
a better way always, in dealing with one of those 
squinting brains, to let it follow out its own thought. 
It will keep to it for a while ; then it will quit the 
rail, so to speak, and run to any side-track which may 
present itself. 

" What is the first thing you would do ? " asked 
Number Five in a pleasant, easy way. 

" The first thing ? Pick out a few thousand of the 
best specimens of the best races, and drown the rest 
like so many blind puppies." 

" Why," said she, " that was tried once, and does 
not seem to have worked very well." 

" Very likely. You mean Noah's flood, I suppose 
More people nowadays, and a better lot to pick from 
than Noah had." 

" Do tell us whom you would take with you," said 
Number Five. 



112 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

" You, if you would go," lie answered, and I thought 
I saw a slight flush on his cheek. " But I did n't 
say that I should go aboard the new ark myself. I 
am not sure that I should. No, I am pretty sure that 
I should n't. I don't believe, on the whole, it would 
pay me to save myself. I ain't of much account 
But I could pick out some that were." 

And just now he was saying that he should like to 
boss the universe ! All this has nothing very wonder- 
ful about it. Every one of us is subject to alterna- 
tions of overvaluation and undervaluation of our- 
selves. Do you not remember soliloquies something 
like this ? " Was there ever such a senseless, stupid 
creature as I am ? How have I managed to keep so 
long out of the idiot asylum ? Undertook to write a 
poem, and stuck fast at the first verse. Had a call 
from a friend who had just been round the world. 
Did n't ask him one word about what he had seen or 
heard, but gave him full details of my private history, 
I having never been off my own hearth-rug for more 
than an hour or two at a time, while he was circum- 
navigating and circumrailroading the globe. Yes, if 
anybody can claim the title, I am certainly the prize 
idiot." I am afraid that we all say such things as this 
to ourselves at times. Do we not use more emphatic 
words than these in our self -depreciation ? I cannot 
say how it is with others, but my vocabulary of self- 
reproach and humiliation is so rich in energetic ex- 
pressions that I should be sorry to have an inter- 
viewer present at an outburst 9f one of its raging 
geysers, its savage soliloquies. A man is a kind of 
inverted thermometer, the bulb uppermost, and the 
column of self -valuation is all the time going up and 
down. Number Seven is very much like other people 
in this respect, — very much like you and me. 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 113 

This train of reflections must not carry me away 
from Number Seven. 

" If I can't get a chance to boss this planet for a 
week or so," he began again, " I think 1 could write 
its history, — yes, the history of the world, in less 
compass than any one who has tried it so far." 

" You know Sir Walter Raleigh's ' History of the 
World,' of course ? " said the Professor. 

" More or less, — more or less," said Number Seven 
prudently. "But I don't care who has written it 
before me. I will agree to write the story of tioo 
worlds, this and the next, in such a compact way that 
you can commit them both to memory in less time 
than you can learn the answer to the first question in 
the Catechism." 

What he had got into his head we could not guess, 
but there was no little curiosity to discover the partic- 
ular bee which was buzzing in his bonnet. He evi- 
dently enjoyed our curiosity, and meant to keep us 
waiting awhile before revealing the great secret. 

" How many words do you think I shall want ? " 

It is a formula, I suppose, I said, and I will grant 
you a hundred words. 

" Twenty," said the Professor. " That was more 
than the wise men of Greece wanted for their grand 
utterances." 

The two Annexes whispered together, and the 
American Annex gave their joint result. One thou- 
sand was the number they had fixed on. They were 
used to hearing lectures, and could hardly conceive 
that any subject could be treated without taking up a 
good part of an hour. 

" Less than ten," said Number Five. " If there 
are to be more than ten, I don't believe that Number 



114 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

Seven would think the surprise would be up to our 
expectations." 

" Guess as much as you like," said Number Seven. 
^ The answer will keep. I don't mean to say what it 
is until we are ready to leave the table." He took a 
blank card from his pocket-book, wrote something on 
it, or appeared, at any rate, to write, and handed it 5 
face down, to the Mistress. What was on the card 
will be found near the end of this paper. I wonder 
if anybody will be curious enough to look further 
along to find out what it was before she reads the next 
paragraph ? 

In the mean time there is a train of thought sug- 
gested by Number Seven and his whims. If you 
want to know how to account for yourself, study the 
characters of your relations. All of our brains squint 
more or less. There is not one in a hundred, cer- 
tainly, that does not sometimes see things distorted 
by double refraction, out of plumb or out of focus, or 
with colors which do not belong to it, or in some way 
betraying that the two halves of the brain are not 
acting in harmony with each other. You wonder at 
the eccentricities of this or that connection of your 
own. Watch yourself, and you will find impulses 
which, but for the restraints you put upon them, would 
make you do the same foolish things which you laugh 
at in that cousin of yours. I once lived in the same 
house with the near relative of a very distinguished 
person, whose name is still honored and revered among 
us. His brain was an active one, like that of his 
famous relative, but it was full of random ideas, un- 
connected trains of thought, whims, crotchets, erratic 
suggestions. Knowing him, I could interpret the 
mental characteristics of the whole family connection 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 115 

in the light of its exaggerated peculiarities as exhib- 
ited in my odd fellow-boarder. Squinting brains are 
a great deal more common than we should at first 
sight believe. Here is a great book, a solid octavo of 
five hundred pages, full of the vagaries of this class 
of organizations. I hope to refer to this work here= 
after, but just now I will only say that, after reading 
till one is tired the strange fancies of the squarers 
of the circle, the inventors of perpetual motion, and 
the rest of the moonstruck dreamers, most persons 
will confess to themselves that they have had notions 
as wild, conceptions as extravagant, theories as base- 
less, as the least rational of those which are here re- 
corded. 

Some day I want to talk about my library. It is 
such a curious collection of old and new books, such 
a mosaic of learning and fancies and follies, that 
a glance over it would interest the company. Per- 
haps I may hereafter give you a talk about books, 
but while I am saying a few passing words upon the 
subject the greatest bibliographical event that ever 
happened in the book-market of the New World is 
taking place under our eyes. Here is Mr. Bernard 
Quaritch just come from his well-known habitat, No. 
15 Piccadilly, with such a collection of rare, beauti= 
ful, and somewhat expensive volumes as the West- 
ern Continent never saw before on the shelves of a 
bibliopole. 

We bookworms are all of us now and then betrayed 
into an extravagance. The keen tradesmen who tempt 
us are like the fishermen who dangle a minnow, a frog, 
or a worm before the perch or pickerel who may be on 
the lookout for his breakfast. But Mr, Quaritch 



116 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

comes among us like that formidable angler of whom 

it is said, — 

His hook he baited with a dragon's tail, 
And sat upon a rock and bobbed for whale. 

The two catalogues which herald his coming are them- 
selves interesting literary documents. One can go 
out with a few shillings in his pocket, and venture 
among the books of the first of these catalogues with- 
out being ashamed to show himself with no larger 
furnishing of the means for indulging his tastes, — he 
will find books enough at comparatively modest prices. 
But if one feels very rich, so rich that it requires a 
good deal to frighten him, let him take the other cata- 
logue and see how many books he proposes to add to 
his library at the prices affixed. Here is a Latin 
Psalter with the Canticles, from the press of Fust and 
Schoeffer, the second book issued from their press, the 
second book printed with a date, that date being 
1459. There are only eight copies of this work 
known to exist ; you can have one of them, if so dis- 
posed, and if you have change enough in your pocket. 
Twenty-six thousand two hundred and fifty dollars 
will make you the happy owner of this precious vol- 
ume. If this is more than you want to pay, you can 
have the Gold Gospels of Henry VIII., on purple 
vellum, for about half the money. There are pages 
on pages of titles of works any one of which would 
be a snug little property if turned into money at its 
catalogue price. 

Why will not our multimillionaires look over this 
catalogue of Mr. Quaritch, and detain some of its 
treasures on this side of the Atlantic for some of 
our public libraries ? We decant the choicest wines 
of Europe into our cellars ; we ought to be always 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 117 

decanting the precious treasures of her libraries and 
galleries into our own, as we have opportunity and 
means. As to the means, there are so many rich peo- 
ple who hardly know what to do with their money 
that it is well to suggest to them any new useful end 
to which their superfluity may contribute. I am not 
in alliance with Mr. Quaritch ; in fact, I am afraid of 
him, for if I stayed a single hour in his library, where 
I never was but once, and then for fifteen minutes 
only, I should leave it so much poorer than I entered 
it that I should be reminded of the picture in the title- 
page of Fuller's " Historie of the Holy Warre : " 
" We went out full. We returned empty." 

— After the teacups were all emptied, the card 
containing Number Seven's abridged history of two 
worlds, this and the next, was handed round. 

This was all it held : — 

! 



After all had looked at it, it was passed back to 
me. " Let The Dictator interpret it," they all said. 

This is what I announced as my interpretation : — 

Two worlds, the higher and the lower, separated by 
the thinnest of partitions. The lower world is that 
of questions ; the upper world is that of answers. 
Endless doubt and unrest here below; wondering, 
admiring, adoring certainty above. — Am I not 
right ? 

" You are right," answered Number Seven sol- 
emnly. " That is my revelation." 

The following poem was found in the sugar-bowL 
I read it to the company. 



118 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

There was much whispering and there were many- 
conjectures as to its authorship, but every Teacup 
looked innocent, and we separated each with his or 
her private conviction. I had mine, but I will not 
mention it. 

THE ROSE AND THE FERN. 

Lady, life's sweetest lesson wouldst thou learn, 

Come thou with me to Love's enchanted bower : 
High overhead the trellised roses burn ; 
Beneath thy feet behold the feathery fern, — 
A leaf without a flower. 

What though the rose leaves fall ? They still are sweet, 

And have been lovely in their beauteous prime, 
While the bare frond seems ever to repeat, 
" For us no bud, no blossom, wakes to greet 
The joyous flowering time ! " 

Heed thou the lesson. Life has leaves to tread 

And flowers to cherish ; summer round thee glows ; 
Wait not till autumn's fading robes are shed, 
But while its petals still are burning red 
Gather life's full-blown rose ! 



VI 



Of course the reading of the poem at the end of the 
last paper has left a deep impression. I strongly sus- 
pect that something very much like love-making is go- 
ing on at our table. A peep under the lid of the 
sugar-bowl has shown me that there is another poem 
ready for the company. That receptacle is looked 
upon with an almost tremulous excitement by more 
than one of The Teacups. The two Annexes turn to- 
wards the mystic urn as if the lots which were to de- 
termine their destiny were shut up in it. Number 
Five, quieter, and not betraying more curiosity than 
belongs to the sex at all ages, glances at the sugar- 
bowl now and then; looking so like a clairvoyant 
that sometimes I cannot help thinking she must be 
one. There is a sly look about that young Doctor's 
eyes, which might imply that he knows something 
about what the silver vessel holds, or is going to hold. 
The Tutor naturally falls under suspicion, as he is 
known to have written and published poems. I sup- 
pose the Professor and myself have hardly been sus- 
pected of writing love-poems ; but there is no telling, 
■ — there is no telling. Why may not some one of the 
lady Teacups have played the part of a masculine 
lover ? George Sand, George Eliot, Charles Egbert 
Craddock, made pretty good men in print. The au- 
thoress of " Jane Eyre " was taken for a man by 
many persons. Can Number Five be masquerading 



120 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

In verse ? Or is one of the two Annexes the make- 
believe lover ? Or did these girls lay their heads to- 
gether, and send the poem we had at our last sitting 
to puzzle the company ? It is certain that the Mistress 
did not write the poem. It is evident that Number 
Seven, who is so severe in his talk about rhymesters 9 
would not, if he could, make such a fool of himself as 
to set up for a " poet." Why should not the Coun= 
sellor fall in love and write verses? A good many 
lawyers have been " poets." 

Perhaps the next poem, which may be looked for 
in its proper place, may help us to form a judgment. 
We may have several verse-writers among us, and if 
so there will be a good opportunity for the exercise 
of judgment in distributing their productions among 
the legitimate claimants. In the mean time, we must 
not let the love-making and the song-writing interfere 
with the more serious matters which these papers are 
expected to contain. 

Number Seven's compendious and comprehensive 
symbolism proved suggestive, as his whimsical notions 
often do. It always pleases me to take some hint 
from anything he says when I can, and carry it out 
in a direction not unlike that of his own remark. I 
reminded the company of his enigmatical symbol. 

You can divide mankind in the same way, I said. 
Two words, each of two letters, will serve to distin- 
guish two classes of human beings who constitute the 
principal divisions of mankind. Can any of you tell 
what those two words are ? 

" Give me five letters," cried Number Seven, " and 
I can solve your problem ! F-o-o-l-s, — those five let- 
ters will give you the first and largest half. For the 
other fraction "— 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 121 

Oh, but, said I, I restrict you absolutely to two let- 
ters. If you are going to take five, you may as well 
take twenty or a hundred. 

After a few attempts, the company gave it up. The 
nearest approach to the correct answer was Number 
Five's guess of Oh and Ah : Oh signifying eternal 
striving after an ideal, which belongs to one kind of 
nature ; and Ah the satisfaction of the other kind of 
nature, which rests at ease in what it has attained. 

Good ! I said to Number Five, but not the answer 
I am after. The great division between human beings 
is into the Ifs and the Ases. 

" Is the last word to be spelt with one or two s's ? " 
asked the young Doctor. 

The company laughed feebly at this question. I 
answered it soberly. With one s. There are more 
foolish people among the Ifs than there are among the 
Ases. 

The company looked puzzled, and asked for an ex- 
planation. 

This is the meaning of those two words as I inter- 
pret them : — 

If it were, — if it might be, — if it could be, — if 
it had been. One portion of mankind go through life 
always regretting, always whining, always imagining. 
These are the people whose backbones remain cartilag- 
inous all their lives long, as do those of certain other 
vertebrate animals, — the sturgeons, for instance. A 
good many poets must be classed with this group of 
vertebrates. 

As it is, — this is the way in which the other class 
of people look at the conditions in which they find 
themselves. They may be optimists or pessimists, — 
they are very largely optimists, — but, taking things 



122 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

just as they find them, they adjust the facts to their 
wishes if they can ; and if they cannot, then they ad- 
just themselves to the facts. I venture to say that if 
one should count the Ifs and the Ases in the conver- 
sation of his acquaintances, he would find the more 
able and important persons among them — statesmen, 
generals, men of business — among the Ases, and the 
majority of the conspicuous failures among the Ifs a 
I don't know but this would be as good a test as that 
of Gideon, — lapping the water or taking it up in the 
hand. I have a poetical friend whose conversation is 
starred as thick with ifs as a boiled ham is with cloves. 
But another friend of mine, a business man, whom I 
trust in making my investments, would not let me 
meddle with a certain stock which I fancied, because, 
as he said, " there are too many ifs in it. As it looks 
now, I would n't touch it." 

I noticed, the other evening, that some private con- 
versation was going on between the Counsellor and 
the two Annexes. There was a mischievous look about 
the little group, and I thought they were hatching 
some plot among them. I did not hear what the Eng- 
lish Annex said, but the American girl's voice was 
sharper, and I overheard what sounded to me like, 
" It is time to stir up that young Doctor." The Coun- 
sellor looked very knowing, and said that he would 
find a chance before long. I was rather amused to 
see how readily he entered into the project of the 
young people. The fact is, the Counsellor is young 
for his time of life ; for he already betrays some signs 
of the change referred to in that once familiar street 
song, which my friend, the great American surgeon, 
inquired for at the music-shops under the title, as he 
got it from the Italian minstrel, 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 123 

" Silva tredi mondi goo." 
I saw, soon after this, that the Counsellor was watch- 
ing his chance to " stir up the young Doctor." 

It does not follow, because our young Doctor's bald 
spot is slower in coming than he could have wished, 
that he has not had time to form many sound conclu- 
sions in the calling to which he has devoted himself 
Vesalius, the father of modern descriptive anatomy, 
published his great work on that subject before he was 
thirty. Bichat, the great anatomist and physiologist, 
who died near the beginning of this century, published 
his treatise, which made a revolution in anatomy and 
pathology, at about the same age ; dying soon after he 
had reached the age of thirty. So, possibly the Coun- 
sellor may find that he has " stirred up " a young man 
who can take care of his own head, in case of aggres- 
sive movements in its direction. 

"Well, Doctor," the Counsellor began, "how are 
stocks in the measles market about these times ? Any 
corner in bronchitis ? Any syndicate in the vaccina- 
tion business ? " All this playfully. 

" I can't say how it is with other people's patients ; 
most of my families are doing very well without my 
help, at this time." 

" Do tell me, Doctor, how many families you own. 
I have heard it said that some of our fellow-citizens 
have two distinct families, but you speak as if you had 
a dozen.'' 

" I have, but not so large a number as I should like ; 
I could take care of fifteen or twenty more without 
having to work too hard." 

" Why, Doctor, you are as bad as a Mormon. What 
do you mean by calling certain families yours f " 

" Don't you speak about my client ? Don't your 



124 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

clients call you their lawyer ? Does n't your baker, 
does n't your butcher, speak of the families he supplies 
as his families ? " 

" To be sure, yes, of course they do ; but I had a 
notion that a man had as many doctors as he had 
organs to be doctored." 

" Well, there is some truth in that ; but did you 
think the old-fashioned family doctor was extinct, — ■ 
a fossil like the megatherium ? " 

" Why, yes, after the recent experience of a friend 
of mine, I did begin to think that there would soon 
be no such personage left as that same old-fashioned 
family doctor. Shall I tell you what that experience 
was?" 

The young Doctor said he should be mightily pleased 
to hear it. He was going to be one of those old-fogy 
practitioners himself. 

"I don't know," the Counsellor said, "whether my 
friend got all the professional terms of his story cor- 
rectly, nor whether I have got them from him without 
making any mistakes ; but if I do make blunders in 
some of the queer names, you can correct me. This 
is my friend's story : — 

" ; My family doctor,' he said, ; was a very sensible 
man, educated at a school where they professed to 
teach all the specialties, but not confining himself to 
any one branch of medical practice. Surgical prac- 
tice he did not profess to meddle with, and there were 
some classes of patients whom he was willing to leave 
to the female physician. But throughout the range 
of diseases not requiring exceptionally skilled manual 
interference, his education had authorized him to con- 
sider himself, and he did consider himself, qualified to 
undertake the treatment of all ordinary cases- It so 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 125 

happened that my young wife was one of those uneasy 
persons who are never long contented with their habit- 
ual comforts and blessings, but always trying to find 
something a little better, something newer, at any rate. 
I was getting to be near fifty years old, and it hap= 
pened to me, as it not rarely does to people at about 
that time of life, that my hair began to fall out. I 
spoke of it to my doctor, who smiled, said it was a part 
of the process of reversed evolution, but might be re- 
tarded a little, and gave me a prescription. I did not 
find any great effect from it, and my wife would have 
me go to a noted dermatologist. The distinguished 
specialist examined my denuded scalp with great care. 
He looked at it through a strong magnifier. He ex- 
amined the bulb of a fallen hair in a powerful micro- 
scope. He deliberated for a while, and then said, 
" This is a case of alopecia. It may perhaps be par- 
tially remedied. I will give you a prescription/ 
Which he did, and told me to call again in a fort- 
night. At the end of three months I had called six 
times, and each time got a new recipe, and detected 
no difference in the course of my " alopecia." After 
I had got through my treatment, I showed my recipes 
to my family physician ; and we found that three of 
them were the same he had used, familiar, old-fash- 
ioned remedies, and the others were taken from a list 
of new and little-tried prescriptions mentioned in one 
of the last medical journals, which was lying on the old 
doctor's table. I might as well have got no better un- 
der his charge, and should have got off much cheaper. 
" 4 The next trouble I had was a little redness of the 
eyes, for which my doctor gave me a wash ; but my 
wife would have it that I must see an oculist. So I 
made four visits to an oculist, and at the last visit the 



126 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

redness was nearly gone, — as it ought to have been 
by that time. The specialist called my complaint con- 
junctivitis, but that did not make it feel any better 
nor get well any quicker. If I had had a cataract or 
any grave disease of the eye, requiring a nice opera- 
tion on that delicate organ, of course I should have 
properly sought the aid of an expert, whose eye, hand, 
and judgment were trained to that special business ; 
but in this case I don't doubt that my family doctor 
would have done just as well as the expert. How- 
ever, I had to obey orders, and my wife would have it 
that I should entrust my precious person only to the 
most skilful specialist in each department of medical 
practice. 

" ' In the course of the year I experienced a variety 
of slight indispositions. For these I was auriscoped 
by an aurist, laryngoscoped by a laryngologist, aus- 
culted by a stethoscopist, and so on, until a complete 
inventory of my organs was made out, and I found 
that if I believed all these searching inquirers pro- 
fessed to have detected in my unfortunate person, I 
could repeat with too literal truth the words of the 
General Confession, " And there is no health in us." 
I never heard so many hard names in all my life. I 
proved to be the subject of a long catalogue of dis- 
eases, and what maladies I was not manifestly guilty 
of I was at least suspected of harboring. I was 
handed along all the way from alopecia, which used 
to be called baldness, to zoster, which used to be 
known as shingles. I was the patient of more than a 
dozen specialists. Very pleasant persons, many of 
them, but what a fuss they made about my trifling 
incommodities ! Please look at that photograph. See 
if there is a minute elevation under one eye.' 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 127 

"'On which side?' I asked him, for I could not 
be sure there was anything different on one side from 
what I saw on the other. 

" ' Under the left eye. I called it a pimple ; the 
specialist called it acne. Now look at this photo- 
graph. It was taken after my acne had been three 
months under treatment. It shows a little more dis- 
tinctly than in the first photograph, does n't it ? ' 

" ' I think it does,' I answered. ' It does n't seem 
to me that you gained a great deal by leaving your 
customary adviser for the specialist.' 

" ' "Well/ my friend continued, ' following my 
wife's urgent counsel, I kept on, as I told you, for a 
whole year with my specialists, going from head to 
foot, and tapering off with a chiropodist. I got a 
deal of amusement out of their contrivances and ex- 
periments. Some of them lighted up my internal sur- 
faces with electrical or other illuminating apparatus. 
Thermometers, dynamometers, exploring-tubes, little 
mirrors that went half-way down to my stomach, tun- 
ing-forks, ophthalmoscopes, percussion-hammers, sin- 
gle and double stethoscopes, speculums, sphygmome- 
ters, — such a battery of detective instruments I had 
never imagined. All useful, I don't doubt ; but at 
the end of the year I began to question whether I 
should n't have done about as well to stick to my long- 
tried practitioner. When the bills for " professional 
services " came in, and the new carpet had to be given 
up, and the old bonnet trimmed over again, and the 
sealskin sack remained a vision, we both agreed, my 
wife and I, that we would try to get along without 
consulting specialists, except in such cases as our fam- 
ily physician considered to be beyond his skill.' " 



128 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

The Counsellor's story of his friend's experiences 
seemed to please the young Doctor very much. It 
" stirred him up," but in an agreeable way ; for, as 
he said, he meant to devote himself to family practice, 
and not to adopt any limited class of cases as a spe- 
cialty. I liked his views so well that I should have 
been ready to adopt them as my own, if they had been 
challenged. 

The young Doctor discourses. 

" I am very glad," he said, " that we have a num- 
ber of practitioners among us who confine themselves 
to the care of single organs and their functions. I 
want to be able to consult an oculist who has done 
nothing but attend to eyes long enough to know all 
that is known about their diseases and their treat- 
ment, — skilful enough to be trusted with the manip- 
ulation of that delicate and most precious organ. I 
want an aurist who knows all about the ear and what 
can be done for its disorders. The maladies of the 
larynx are very ticklish things to handle, and nobody 
should be trusted to go behind the epiglottis who has 
not the tactus eruditus. And so of certain other par- 
ticular classes of complaints. A great city must have 
a limited number of experts, each a final authority, to 
be appealed to in cases where the family physician 
finds himself in doubt. There are operations which 
no surgeon should be willing to undertake unless he 
has paid a particular, if not an exclusive, attention to 
the cases demanding such operations. All this I will- 
ingly grant. 

" But it must not be supposed that we can return 
to the methods of the old Egyptians — who, if my 
memory serves me correctly, had a special physician 



OYER THE TEACUPS. 129 

for every part of the body — without falling into cer- 
tain errors and incurring certain liabilities. 

" The specialist is much like other people engaged 
in lucrative business. He is apt to magnify his call= 
ing\ to make much of any symptom which will bring 
a patient within range of his battery of remedies. I 
found a case in one of our medical journals, a couple 
of years ago, which illustrates what I mean. Dr. 
— — , of Philadelphia, had a female patient with a 
crooked nose, — deviated septum, if our young schol- 
ars like that better. She was suffering from what the 
doctor called reflex headache. She had been to an 
oculist, who found that the trouble was in her eyes. 
She went from him to a gynecologist, who considered 
her headache as owing to causes for which his spe- 
cialty had the remedies. How many more specialists 
would have appropriated her, if she had gone the 
rounds of them all, I dare not guess ; but you remem- 
ber the old story of the siege, in which each artisan 
proposed means of defence which he himself was 
ready to furnish. Then a shoemaker said, ' Hang 
your walls with new boots.' 

te Human nature is the same with medical specialists 
as it was with ancient cordwainers, and it is too possi- 
ble that a hungry practitioner may be warped by his 
interest in fastening on a patient who, as he persuades 
himself, comes under his medical jurisdiction. The 
specialist has but one fang with which to seize and 
hold his prey, but that fang is a fearfully loug and 
sharp canine. Being confined to a narrow field of 
observation and practice, he is apt to give much of 
his time to curious study, which may be maqnifiqiie, 
but is not exactly la guerre against the patient's 
malady. He divides and subdivides, and gets many 



130 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

varieties of diseases, in most respects similar. These 
he equips with new names, and thus we have those ter- 
rific nomenclatures which are enough to frighten the 
medical student, to say nothing of the sufferers stag- 
gering under this long catalogue of local infirmitieSo 
The 4 old-fogy ' doctor, who knows the family tenden- 
cies of his patient, who ' understands his constitution/ 
will often treat him better than the famous specialist? 
who sees him for the first time, and has to guess at 
many things ' the old doctor ' knows from his previous 
experience with the same patient and the family to 
which he belongs. 

" It is a great luxury to practise as a specialist in 
almost any class of diseases. The special practitioner 
has his own hours, hardly needs a night-bell, can have 
his residence out of the town in which he exercises his 
calling, — in short, lives like a gentleman ; while the 
hard-worked general practitioner submits to a servi- 
tude more exacting than that of the man who is em- 
ployed in his stable or in his kitchen. That is the 
kind of life I have made up my mind to." 

The teaspoons tinkled all round the table. This 
was the usual sign of approbation, instead of the clap- 
ping of hands. 

The young Doctor paused, and looked round among 
The Teacups. "I beg your pardon," he said, "for 
taking up so much of your time with medicine. It is 
a subject that a good many persons, especially ladies, 
take an interest in and have a curiosity about, but I 
have no right to turn this tea-table into a lecture plat- 
form." 

" We should like to hear you talk longer about it,' 5 
said the English Annex. " One of us has thought of 
devoting herself to the practice of medicine. Would 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 131 

you lecture to us, if you were a professor in one of 
the great medical schools ? " 

" Lecture to students of your sex ? Why not, I 
should like to know ? I don't think it is the calling 
for which the average woman is especially adapted, 
but my teacher got a part of his medical education 
from a lady, Madame Lachapelle ; and I don't see 
why, if one can learn from a woman, he may not 
teach a woman, if he knows enough." 

" We all like a little medical talk now and then," 
said Number Five, " and we are much obliged to you 
for your discourse. You are specialist enough to take 
care of a sprained ankle, I suppose, are you not?" 

" I hope I should be equal to that emergency," an- 
swered the young Doctor ; " but I trust you are not 
suffering from any such accident ? " 

" No," said Number Five, " but there is no telling 
what may happen. I might slip, and get a sprain or 
break a sinew, or something, and I should like to 
know that there is a practitioner at hand to take 
care of my injury. I think I would risk myself in 
your hands, although you are not a specialist. Would 
you venture to take charge of the case ? " 

"Ah, my dear lady," he answered gallantly, " the 
risk would be in the other direction. I am afraid it 
would be safer for your doctor if he were an older man 
than I am." 

This is the first clearly, indisputably sentimental 
outbreak w r hich has happened in conversation at our 
table. I tremble to think what will come of it ; for 
we have several inflammable elements in our circle, 
and a spark like this is liable to light on any one or 
two of them, 



132 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

I was not sorry that this medical episode came in 
to vary the usual course of talk at our table. I like 
to have one of an intelligent company, who knows 
anything thoroughly, hold the floor for a time, and 
discourse upon the subject which chiefly engages his 
daily thoughts and furnishes his habitual occupation 
It is a privilege to meet such a person now and then, 
and let him have his full swing. But because there 
are " professionals " to whom we are willing to listen 
as oracles, I do not want to see everybody who is not 
a " professional " silenced or snubbed, if he ventures 
into any field of knowledge which he has not made 
especially his own. I like to read Montaigne's re- 
marks about doctors, though he never took a medical 
degree. I can even enjoy the truth in the sharp satire 
of Voltaire on the medical profession. I frequently 
prefer the remarks I hear from the pew after the ser- 
mon to those I have just been hearing from the pul- 
pit. There are a great many things which I never 
expect to comprehend, but which I desire very much 
to apprehend. Suppose that our circle of Teacups 
were made up of specialists, — experts in various de- 
partments. I should be very willing that each one 
should have his innings at the proper time, when the 
company were ready for him. But the time is coming 
when everybody will know something about every- 
thing. How can one have the illustrated magazines, 
the "Popular Science Monthly," the psychological 
journals, the theological periodicals, books on all sub- 
jects, forced on his attention, in their own persons, so 
to speak, or in the reviews which analyze and pass 
judgment upon them, without getting some ideas which 
belong to many provinces of human intelligence? 
The air we breathe is made up of four elements, at 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 133 

least : oxygen, nitrogen, carbonic acid gas, and know- 
ledge. There is something quite delightful to witness 
in the absorption and devotion of a genuine specialist 
There is a certain sublimity in that picture of the 
dying scholar in Browning's " A Grammarian's Fu~ 
neral : " — 

" So with the throttling hands of death at strife, 
Ground lie at grammar ; 
Still, through the rattle, parts or speech were rife ; 

While he could stammer 
He settled HotVs business — let it be — 

Properly based Oun — 
Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De, 
Dead from the waist down." 

A genuine enthusiasm, which will never be satisfied 
until it has pumped the well dry at the bottom of 
which truth is lying, always excites our interest, if not 
our admiration. 

One of the pleasantest of our American writers, 
whom we all remember as Ik Marvel, and greet in 
his more recent appearance as Donald Grant Mitchell, 
speaks of the awkwardness which he feels in offering 
to the public a " panoramic view of British writers in 
these days of specialists, — when students devote half 
a lifetime to the analysis of the works of a single 
author, and to the proper study of a single period." 

He need not have feared that his connected sketches 
of "English Lands, Letters and Kings" would be 
any less welcome because they do not pretend to fill 
up all the details or cover all the incidents they hint 
in vivid outline. How many of us ever read or ever 
will read Drayton's " Poly-Olbion ? " Twenty thou<= 
sand long Alexandrines are filled with admirable 
descriptions of scenery, natural productions, and his- 
torical events, but how many of us in these days have 



184 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

time to read and inwardly digest twenty thousand 
Alexandrine verses ? I fear that the specialist is apt 
to hold his intelligent reader or hearer too cheap. So 
far as I have observed in medical specialties, what he 
knows in addition to the knowledge of the well-taught 
general practitioner is very largely curious rather than 
important. Having exhausted all that is practical, 
the specialist is naturally tempted to amuse himself 
with the natural history of the organ or function he 
deals with ; to feel as a writing-master does when he 
sets a copy, — not content to shape the letters prop- 
erly, but he must add flourishes and fancy figures, to 
let off his spare energy. 

1 am beginning to be frightened. When I began 
these papers, my idea was a very simple and innocent 
one. Here was a mixed company, of various condi- 
tions, as I have already told my readers, who came to- 
gether regularly, and before they were aware of it 
formed something like a club or association. As I 
was the patriarch among them, they gave me the name 
some of you may need to be reminded of ; for as these 
reports are published at intervals, you may not remem- 
ber the fact that I am what The Teacups have seen fit 
to call The Dictator. 

Now, what did I expect when I began these papers, 
and what is it that has begun to frighten me ? 

I expected to report grave conversations and light 
colloquial passages of arms among the members of the 
circle. I expected to hear, perhaps to read, a paper 
now and then. I expected to have, from time to time, 
a poem from some one of The Teacups, for I felt sure 
there must be among them one or more poets, — Tea- 
cups of the finer and rarer translucent kind of porce- 



OYER THE TEACUPS. 135 

lain, to speak metaphorically. Out of these conversa- 
tions and written contributions I thought I might 
make up a readable series of papers ; a not wholly- 
unwelcome string of recollections, anticipations, sug- 
gestions, too often perhaps repetitions, that would be 
to the twilight what my earlier series had been to the 
morning. 

I hoped also that I should come into personal re= 
lations with my old constituency, if I may call my 
nearer friends, and those more distant ones who be- 
long to my reading parish, by that name. It is time 
that I should. I received this blessed morning — I 
am telling the literal truth — a highly flattering obit- 
uary of myself in the shape of an extract from " Le 
National " of the 10th of February last. This is a 
bi-weekly newspaper, published in French, in the city 
of Plattsburg, Clinton County, New York. I am 
occasionally reminded by my unknown friends that 1 
must hurry up their autograph, or make haste to copy 
that poem they wish to have in the author's own hand- 
writing, or it will be too late ; but I have never be- 
fore been huddled out of the world in this way. I 
take this rather premature obituary as a hint that, 
unless I come to some arrangement with my well- 
meaning but insatiable correspondents, it would be as 
well to leave it in type, for I cannot bear much longer 
the load they lay upon me. I will explain myself on 
this point after I have told my readers what has 
frightened me. 

I am beginning to think this room where we take 
our tea is more like a tinder-box than a quiet and safe 
place for " a party in a parlor." It is true that there 
are at least two or three incombustibles at our table, 
but it looks to me as if the company might pair off 



136 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

before the season is over, like the crew of Her Maj= 
esty's ship the Mantelpiece, — three or four weddings 
clear our whole table of all but one or two of the im- 
pregnables. The poem we found in the sugar-bowl 
last week first opened my eyes to the probable state of 
things. Now, the idea of having to tell a love-story^ 
— perhaps two or three love-stories, — when I set out 
with the intention of repeating instructive, useful, or 
entertaining discussions, naturally alarms me. It is 
quite true that many things which look to me suspi- 
cious may be simply playful. Young people (and we 
have several such among The Teacups) are fond of 
make-believe courting when they cannot have the real 
thing, — " flirting," as it used to be practised in the 
days of Arcadian innocence, not the more modern and 
more questionable recreation which has reached us 
from the home of the cicisbeo. Whatever comes of it, 
I shall tell what I see, and take the consequences. 

But I am at this moment going to talk in my own 
proper person to my own particular public, which, as 
I find by my correspondence, is a very considerable 
one, and with which I consider myself in exceptionally 
pleasant relations. 

I have read recently that Mr. Gladstone receives 
six hundred letters a day. Perhaps he does not re- 
ceive six hundred letters every day, but if he gets any- 
thing like half that number daily, what can he do with 
them ? There was a time when he was said to answer 
all his correspondents. It is understood, I think, that 
he has given up doing so in these later days. 

I do not pretend that I receive six hundred or even 
sixty letters a day, but I do receive a good many, and 
have told the public of the fact from time to time $ 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 137 

under the pressure of their constantly increasing exac- 
tions. As it is extremely onerous, and is soon going 
to be impossible, for me to keep up the wide range of 
correspondence which has become a large part of my 
occupation, and tends to absorb all the vital force 
which is left me, I wish to enter into a final explana- 
tion with the well-meaning but merciless taskmasters 
who have now for many years been levying their daily 
tax upon me. I have preserved thousands of their 
letters, and destroyed a very large number, after an- 
swering most of them. A few interesting chapters 
might be made out of the letters I have kept, — not 
only such as are signed by the names of well-known 
personages, but many from unknown friends, of whom 
I had never heard before and have never heard since. 
A great deal of the best writing the languages of the 
world have ever known has been committed to leaves 
that withered out of sight before a second sunlight 
had fallen upon them. I have had many letters I 
should have liked to give the public, had their nature 
admitted of their being offered to the world. What 
struggles of young ambition, finding no place for its 
energies, or feeling its incapacity to reach the ideal 
towards which it was striving ! What longings of 
disappointed, defeated fellow-mortals, trying to find a 
new home for themselves in the heart of one whom 
they have amiably idealized ! And oh, what hopeless 
efforts of mediocrities and inferiorities, believing in 
themselves as superiorities, and stumbling on through 
limping disappointments to prostrate failure ! Pov« 
erty comes pleading, not for charity, for the most part 9 
but imploring us to find a purchaser for its unmarket- 
able wares. The unreadable author particularly re- 
quests us to make a critical examination of his book, 



138 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

and report to him whatever may be our verdict, — as 
if he wanted anything but our praise, and that very 
often to be used in his publisher's advertisements. 

But what does not one have to submit to who has 
become the martyr — the Saint Sebastian — of a liter- 
ary correspondence ! I will not dwell on the possible 
Impression produced on a sensitive nature by reading 
one's own premature obituary, as I have told you has 
been my recent experience. I will not stop to think 
whether the urgent request for an autograph by return 
post, in view of the possible contingencies which might 
render it the last one was ever to write, is pleasing or 
not. At threescore and twenty one must expect such 
hints of what is like to happen before long. I sup- 
pose, if some near friend were to watch one who was 
looking over such a pressing letter, he might possibly 
see a slight shadow flit over the reader's features, and 
some such dialogue might follow as that between 
Othello and lago, after " this honest creature " has 
been giving breath to his suspicions about Desde° 
mona : — - 

" I see this hath a little dash'd your spirits. 

" Not a jot, not a jot. 

" My lord, I see you ? re moved." 
And a little later the reader might ? like Othello, com- 
plain, — 

" I have a pain upon my forehead here." 

Nothing more likely. But, for myself, I have grown 
callous to all such allusions. The repetition of the 
Scriptural phrase for the natural term of life is so f re= 
quent that it wears out one's sensibilities. 

But how many charming and refreshing letters I 
have received ! How often I have felt their encour- 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 139 

agement in moments of doubt and depression, such as 
the happiest temperaments must sometimes experience ! 
If the time conies when to answer all my kind un- 
known friends, even by dictation, is impossible, or 
more than I feel equal to, I wish to refer any of those 
who may feel disappointed at not receiving an an= 
swer to the following general acknowledgments : — 

I. I am always grateful for any attention which 
shows me that I am kindly remembered. — II. Your 
pleasant message has been read to me, and has been 
thankfully listened to. — III. Your book (your essay) 
(your poem) has reached me safely, and has received 
all the respectful attention to which it seemed entitled. 
It would take more than all the time I have at my 
disposal to read all the printed matter and all the 
manuscripts which are sent to me, and you would not 
ask me to attempt the impossible. You will not, 
therefore, expect me to express a critical opinion of 
your work. — IV. I am deeply sensible to your ex- 
pressions of personal attachment to me as the author 
of certain writings which have brought me very near 
to you, in virtue of some affinity in our ways of 
thought and moods of feeling. Although I cannot 
keep up correspondences with many of my readers 
who seem to be thoroughly congenial with myself, let 
them be assured that their letters have been read or 
heard with peculiar gratification, and are preserved as 
precious treasures. 

I trust that after this notice no correspondent will 
be surprised to find his or her letter thus answered by 
anticipation ; and that if one of the above f ormuke is 
the only answer he receives, the unknown friend will 



140 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

remember that he or she is one of a great many whose 
incessant demands have entirely outrun my power of 
answering them as fully as the applicants might wish 
and perhaps expect. 

I could make a very interesting volume of the let- 
ters I have received from correspondents unknown to 
the world of authorship, but writing from an instinc= 
tive impulse, which many of them say they have long 
felt and resisted. One must not allow himself to be 
flattered into an overestimate of his powers because he 
gets many letters expressing a peculiar attraction to- 
wards his books, and a preference of them to those 
with which he would not have dared to compare his 
own. Still, if the homo unius libri — the man of one 
book — choose to select one of our own writing as his 
favorite volume, it means something, — not much, per- 
haps ; but if one has unlocked the door to the secret 
entrance of one heart, it is not unlikely that his key 
may fit the locks of others. What if nature has lent 
him a master key ? He has found the wards and slid 
back the bolt of one lock ; perhaps he may have 
learned the secret of others. One success is an en- 
couragement to try again. Let the writer of a truly 
loving letter, such as greets one from time to time, 
remember that, though he never hears a word from it, 
it may prove one of the best rewards of an anxious 
and laborious past, and the stimulus of a still aspiring 
future. 

Among the letters I have recently received, none is 
more interesting than the following. The story of 
Helen Keller, who wrote it, is told in the well-known 
illustrated magazine called " The Wide Awake," in 
the number for July, 1888. For the account of this 
little girl, now between nine and ten years old, and 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 141 

other letters of her writing, I must refer to the article 
I have mentioned. It is enough to say that she is 
deaf and dumb and totally blind. She was seven 
years old when her teacher, Miss Sullivan, under the 
direction of Mr. Anagnos, at the Blind Asylum at 
South Boston, began her education. A child fuller 
of life and happiness it would be hard to find. It 
seems as if her soul was flooded with light and 
filled with music that had found entrance to it through 
avenues closed to other mortals. It is hard to under- 
stand how she has learned to deal with abstract ideas, 
and so far to supplement the blanks left by the senses 
of sight and hearing that one would hardly think of 
her as wanting in any human faculty. Remember 
Milton's pathetic picture of himself, suffering from 
only one of poor little Helen's deprivations : — 

" Not to me returns 
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, 
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, 
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine ; 
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark 
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men 
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair 
Presented with a universal blank 
Of Nature's works, to me expunged and rased, 
And wisdom atone entrance quite shut out." 

Surely for this loving and lovely child does 

" the celestial Light 
Shine inward." 

Anthropologist, metaphysician, most of all theologian, 
here is a lesson which can teach you much that you 
will not find in your primers and catechisms. Why 
should I call her " poor little Helen " ? Where can 
you find a happier child ? 



142 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

South Boston, Mass., March 1, 1890. 
Dear Kind Poet, — I have thought of you many 
times since that bright Sunday when I bade you good- 
bye, and I am going to write you a letter because I 
love you. I am sorry that you have no little children 
to play with sometimes, but I think you are very 
happy with your books, and your many, many friends. 
On Washington's Birthday a great many people came 
here to see the little blind children, and I read for 
them from your poems, and showed them some beauti- 
ful shells which came from a little island near Palos. 
I am reading a very sad story called " Little Jakey." 
Jakey was the sweetest little fellow you can imagine, 
but he was poor and blind. I used to think, when I 
was small and before I could read, that everybody was 
always happy, and at first it made me very sad to 
know about pain and great sorrow ; but now I know 
that we could never learn to be brave and patient, if 
there were only joy in the world. I am studying 
about insects in Zoology, and I have learned many 
things about butterflies. They do not make honey for 
us, like the bees, but many of them are as beautiful 
as the flowers they light upon, and they always delight 
the hearts of little children. They live a gay life, 
flitting from flower to flower, sipping the drops of 
honey-dew, without a thought for the morrow. They 
are just like little boys and girls when they forget 
books and studies, and run away to the woods and the 
fields to gather wild-flowers, or wade in the ponds for 
fragrant lilies, happy in the bright sunshine. If my 
little sister comes to Boston next June, will you let me 
bring her to see you ? She is a lovely baby and I am 
sure you will love [her]. Now I must tell my gentle 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 143 

poet good-bye, for I have a letter to write home before 
I go to bed. From your loving little friend, 

Helen A. Keller. 

The reading of this letter made many eyes glisten, 
and a dead silence hushed the whole circle. All at 
once Delilah, our pretty table-maid, forgot her place 5 
— what business had she to be listening to our conver- 
sation and reading ? — and began sobbing, just as if 
she had been a lady. She could n't help it, she ex- 
plained afterwards, — she had a little blind sister at 
the asylum, who had told her about Helen's reading 
to the children. 

It was very awkward, this breaking-down of our 
pretty Delilah, for one girl crying will sometimes set 
off a whole row of others, — it is as hazardous as 
lighting one cracker in a bunch. The two Annexes 
hurried out their pocket-handkerchiefs, and I almost 
expected a semi-hysteric cataclysm. At this critical 
moment Number Five called Delilah to her, looked 
into her face with those calm eyes of hers, and spoke 
a few soft words. Was Number Five forgetful, too ? 
Did she not remember the difference of their posi- 
tion ? I suppose so. But she quieted the poor hand- 
maiden as simply and easily as a nursing mother 
quiets her unweaned baby. Why are we not all in 
love with Number Five ? Perhaps we are. At any 
rate, I suspect the Professor. When we all get quiet, 
I will touch him up about that visit she promised to 
make to his laboratory. 

I got a chance at last to speak privately with him. 
" Did Number Five go to meet you in your labora- 
tory, as she talked of doing ? " 



144 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

" Oh, yes, of course she did, — why, she said she 
would ! " 

" Oh, to be sure. Do tell me what she wanted in 
your laboratory." 

" She wanted me to burn a diamond for her." 

" Bum a diamond ! What was that for ? Be- 
cause Cleopatra swallowed a pearl ? " 

" No, nothing of that kind. It was a small stone, 
and had a flaw in it. Number Five said she did n't 
want a diamond with a flaw in it, and that she did 
want to see how a diamond would burn." 

" Was that all that happened ? " 

" That was all. She brought the two Annexes with 
her, and I gave my three visitors a lecture on carbon, 
which they seemed to enjoy very much." 

I looked steadily in the Professor's face during the 
reading of the following poem. I saw no questionable 
look upon it, — but he has a remarkable command of 
his features. Number Five read it with a certain 
archness of expression, as if she saw all its meaning, 
which I think some of the company did not quite 
take in. They said they must read it slowly and care 
fully. Somehow, " I like you " and " I love you " 
got a little mixed, as they heard it. It was not Num- 
ber Five's fault, for she read it beautifully, as we all 
agreed, and as I knew she would when I handed it to 
her. 

I LIKE YOU AND I LOVE YOU. 

I like you met I love you, face to face ; 

The path was narrow, and they could not pass. 

I like you smiled ; I love you cried, Alas ! 
And so they halted for a little space. 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 145 

" Turn thou and go before," I love you said, 

" Down the green pathway, bright with many a flower ; 
Deep in the valley, lo ! my bridal bower 
Awaits thee." But I like you shook his head. 

Then while they lingered on the span-wide shelf 
That shaped a pathway round the rocky ledge, 
I like you bared his icy dagger's edge, 

And first he slew I love you, — then himself. 



ra. 



There is no use in burdening my table with those 
letters of inquiry as to where our meetings are held, 
and what are the names of the persons designated by 
numbers, or spoken of under the titles of the Profes- 
sor, the Tutor, and so forth. It is enough that you 
are aware who I am, and that I am known at the 
tea-table as The Dictator. Theatrical " asides " are 
apt to be whispered in a pretty loud voice, and the 
persons who ought not to have any idea of what is said 
are expected to be reasonably hard of hearing. If I 
named all The Teacups, some of them might be of- 
fended. If any of my readers happen to be able to 
identify any one Teacup by some accidental circum- 
stance, — say, for instance, Number Five, by the in- 
cident of her burning the diamond, — I hope they 
will keep quiet about it. Number Five does n't want 
to be pointed out in the street as the extravagant per- 
son who makes use of such expensive fuel, for the 
story would soon grow to a statement that she always 
uses diamonds, instead of cheaper forms of carbon, to 
heat her coffee with. So with other members of the 
circle. The " cracked Teacup," Number Seven, would 
not, perhaps, be pleased to recognize himself under 
that title. I repeat it, therefore, Do not try to iden- 
tify the individual Teacups. You will not get them 
right ; or, if you do, you may too probably make 
trouble. How is it possible that I can keep up my 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 147 

freedom of intercourse with you all if you insist on 
bellowing my "asides " through a speaking-trumpet? 
Besides, you cannot have failed to see that there are 
strong symptoms of the springing up of delicate rela- 
tions between some of our number. I told you how 
it would be. It did not require a prophet to foresee 
that the saucy intruder who, as Mr. Willis wrote, and 
the dear dead girls used to sing, in our young days, 

" Taketh every form of air, 
And ever}- shape of earth, 
And comes unbidden everywhere, 
Like thought's mysterious birth," 

would pop his little curly head up between one or 
more pairs of Teacups. If you will stop these ques- 
tions, then, I will go on with my reports of what was 
said and done at our meetings over the teacups. 

Of all things beautiful in this fair world, there is 
nothing so enchanting to look upon, to dream about, 
as the first opening of the flower of young love. How 
closely the calyx has hidden the glowing leaves in its 
quiet green mantle ! Side by side, two buds have been 
tossing jauntily in the breeze, often brought very near 
to each other, sometimes touching for a moment, with 
a secret thrill in their close-folded heart-leaves, it may 
be, but still the cool green sepals shutting tight over 
the burning secret within. All at once a morning ray 
touches one of the two buds, and the point of a blush 
ing petal betrays the imprisoned and swelling blos- 
som. 

— Oh, no, I did not promise a love-story. There 
may be a little sentiment now and then, but these pa- 
pers are devoted chiefly to the opinions, prejudices, 
fancies, whims, of myself, The Dictator, and others 
of The Teacups who have talked or written for the 
general benefit of the company. 



148 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

Here are some of the remarks I made the other 
evening on the subject of Intellectual Over-Feeding 
and its consequence, Mental Dysjjeyjsia. 

There is something* positively appalling in the 
amount of printed matter yearly, monthly, weekly, 
daily, secreted by that great gland of the civilized or- 
ganism, the press. I need not dilate upon this point, 
for it is brought home to every one of you who ever 
looks into a bookstore or a public library. So large 
is the variety of literary products continually coming 
forward, forced upon the attention of the reader by 
stimulating and suggestive titles, commended to his 
notice by famous names, recasting old subjects and 
developing and illustrating new ones, that the mind is 
liable to be urged into a kind of unnatural hunger, 
leading to a repletion which is often followed by dis- 
gust and disturbed nervous conditions as its natural 
consequence. 

It has long been a favorite rule with me, a rule 
which I have never lost sight of, however imperfectly 
I have carried it out : Tiy to know enough of a wide 
range of subjects to profit by the conversation of 
intelligent persons of different callings and various 
intellectual gifts and acquisitions. The cynic will 
paraphrase this into a shorter formula : Get a smatter- 
ing in every sort of knowledge. I must therefore add 
a second piece of advice : Learn to hold as of small 
account the comments of the cynic. He is often 
amusing, sometimes really witty, occasionally, without 
meaning it, instructive ; but his talk is to profitable 
conversation what the stone is to the pulp of the 
peach, what the cob is to the kernels on an ear of 
Indian corn. Once more : Do not be bullied out of 
your common sense by the specialist ; two to one, he 



OVER THE TEACUPS, 149 

is a pedant, with all liis knowledge and valuable qual- 
ities, and will " cavil on the ninth part of a hair," if 
it will give him a chance to show off his idle erudition* 

I saw attributed to me, the other day, the saying, 
"Know something about everything, and everything 
about something." I am afraid it does not belong to 
me, but I will treat it as I used to treat a stray boat 
which came through my meadow, floating down the 
Housatonic, — get hold of it and draw it ashore, and 
hold on to it until the owner turns up. If this precept 
is used discreetly, it is very serviceable ; but it is as 
well to recognize the fact that you cannot know some- 
thing about everything in days like these of intellec- 
tual activity, of literary and scientific production. We 
all feel this. It makes us nervous to see the shelves 
of new books, many of which we feel as if we ought to 
read, and some among them to study. We must adopt 
some principle of selection among the books outside of 
any particular branch which we may have selected for 
study. I have often been asked what books I would 
recommend for a course of reading. I have always 
answered that I had a great deal rather take advice 
than give it. Fortunately, a number of scholars have 
furnished lists of books to which the inquirer may be 
directed. But the worst of it is that each student is 
in need of a little library specially adapted to his 
wants. Here is a young man writing to me from a 
Western college, and wants me to send him a list of 
the books 7/hich I think would be most useful to himu 
He does not send me his intellectual measurements ? 
and he might as well have sent to a Boston tailor for 
a coat, without any hint of his dimensions in length, 
breadth, and thickness. 

But instead of laying down rules for reading, and 



150 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

furnishing lists of the books which should be read in 
order, I will undertake the much humbler task of giv- 
ing a little quasi-medical advice to persons, young or 
old, suffering from book-hunger, book-surfeit, book= 
nervousness, book-indigestion, book-nausea, and all 
other maladies which, directly or indirectly, may be 
traced to books, and to which I could give Greek or 
Latin names if I thought it worth while. 

I have a picture hanging in my library, a lithograph, 
of which many of my readers may have seen copies. 
It represents a gray-haired old book-lover at the top 
of a long flight of steps. He finds himself in clover, 
so to speak, among rare old editions, books he has 
longed to look upon and never seen before, rarities, 
precious old volumes, incunabula, cradle-books, printed 
while the art was in its infancy, — its glorious infancy, 
for it was born a giant. The old bookworm is so in- 
toxicated with the sight and handling of the price- 
less treasures that he cannot bear to put one of the 
volumes back after he has taken it from the shelf. 
So there he stands, — one book open in his hands, 
a volume under each arm, and one or more between 
his legs, — loaded with as many as he can possibly 
hold at the same time. 

Now, that is just the way in which the extreme form 
of book-hunger shows itself in the reader whose appe- 
tite has become over-developed. He wants to read so 
many books that he over-crams himself with the crude 
materials of knowledge, which become knowledge only 
when the mental digestion has time to assimilate 
them. I never can go into that famous " Corner Book= 
store " and look over the new books in the row before 
me, as I enter the door, without seeing half a dozen 
which I want to read, or at least to know something 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 151 

about. I cannot empty my purse of its contents, and 
crowd my bookshelves with all those volumes. The 
titles of many of them interest me. I look into one 
or two, perhaps. I have sometimes picked up a line 
or a sentence, in these momentary glances between the 
uncut leaves of a new book, which I have never for- 
gotten. As a trivial but bona fide example, one day 
I opened a book on duelling. I remember only these 
words: " Conservons-Ia, cette noble institution" I 
had never before seen duelling called a noble institu- 
tion, and I wish I had taken the name of the book. 
T$ook-tasting is not necessarily profitless, but it is very 
stimulating, and makes one hungry for more than he 
needs for the nourishment of his thinking-marrow. 
To feed this insatiable hunger, the abstracts, the re- 
views, do their best. But these, again, have grown so 
numerous and so crowded with matter that it is hard 
to find time to master their contents. We are accus- 
tomed, therefore, to look for analyses of these periodi- 
cals, and at last we have placed before us a formida- 
ble-looking monthly, " The Review of Reviews." After 
the analyses comes the newspaper notice ; and there 
is still room for the epigram, which sometimes makes 
short work with all that has gone before on the same 
subject. 

It is just as well to recognize the fact that if one 
should read day and night, confining himself to hig 
own language, he could not pretend to keep up with 
the press. He might as well try to race with a loco- 
motive. The first discipline, therefore, is that of de= 
spair. If you could stick to your reading day and 
night for fifty years, what a learned idiot you would 
become long before the half-century was over ! Well, 
then, there is no use in gorging one's self with kpow- 



152 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

ledge, and no need of self-reproach because one is con- 
tent to remain more or less ignorant of many things 
which interest his fellow-creatures. We gain a good 
deal of knowledge through the atmosphere ; we learn 
a great deal by accidental hearsay, provided we have 
the mordant in our own consciousness which makes 
the wise remark, the significant fact, the instructive 
incident, take hold upon it. After the stage of de- 
spair comes the period of consolation. We soon find 
that we are not so much worse off than most of our 
neighbors as we supposed. The fractional value of 
the wisest shows a small numerator divided by an in- 
finite denominator of knowledge. 

I made some explanations to The Teacups, the other 
evening, which they received very intelligently and 
graciously, as I have no doubt the readers of these re- 
ports of mine will receive them. If the reader will 
turn back to the end of the fourth number of these 
papers, he will find certain lines entitled, " Cacoe- 
thes ScribendV They were said to have been taken 
from the usual receptacle of the verses which are con- 
tributed by The Teacups, and, though the fact was 
not mentioned, were of my own composition. I found 
them in manuscript in my drawer, and as my subject 
had naturally suggested the train of thought they car- ■ 
ried out into extravagance, I printed them. At the 
same time they sounded very natural, as we say, and 
I felt as if I had published them somewhere or other 
before ; but I could find no evidence of it, and so I 
ventured to have them put in type. 

And here I wish to take breath for a short, separate 
paragraph. I have often felt, after writing a line 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 153 

which pleased me more than common, that it was not 
new, and perhaps was not my own. I have very rarely, 
however, found such a coincidence in ideas or expres- 
sion as would be enough to justify an accusation of un- 
conscious plagiarism, — conscious plagiarism is not 
my particular failing. I therefore say my say, set 
down my thought, print my line, and do not heed the 
suspicion that I may not be as original as I supposed, 
in the passage I have been writing. My experience 
may be worth something to a modest young writer, 
and so I have interrupted what I was about to say by 
intercalating this paragraph. 

In this instance my telltale suspicion had not been 
at fault. I had printed those same lines, years ago, 
in " The Contributors' Club," to which I have rarely 
sent any of my prose or verse. Nobody but the editor 
has noticed the fact, so far as I know. This is con- 
soling, or mortifying, I hardly know which. I sup- 
pose one has a right to plagiarize from himself, but 
he does not want to present his work as fresh from 
the workshop when it has been long standing in his 
neighbor's shop-window. 

But I have just received a letter from a brother of 
the late Henry Howard Brownell, the poet of the Bay 
Fight and the River Tight, in which he quotes a pas- 
sage from an old book, " A Heroine, Adventures of 
Cherubina," which might well have suggested my own 
lines, if I had ever seen it. I have not the slightest 
recollection of the book or the passage. I think its 
liveliness and "local color" will make it please the 
reader, as it pleases me, more than my own more pro- 
saic extravagances : — 



154 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

LINES TO A PRETTY LITTLE MAID OF MAMMA'S. 

" If Black Sea, Red Sea, White Sea, ran 
One tide of ink to Ispahan, 
If all the geese in Lincoln fens 
Produced spontaneous well-made pens, 
If Holland old and Holland new 
One wondrous sheet of paper grew, 
And could I sing but half the grace 
Of half a freckle in thy face, 
Each syllable I wrote would reach 
From Inverness to Bognor's beach, — 
Each hair-stroke be a river Rhine, 
Each verse an equinoctial line ! ' ' 

" The immediate dismissal of the ' little maid ' was 
the consequence." 

I may as well say that our Delilah was not in the 
room when the last sentence was read. 

Readers must be either very good-natured or very 
careless. I have laid myself open to criticism by more 
than one piece of negligence, which has been passed 
over without invidious comment by the readers of my 
papers. How could I, for instance, have written in 
my original "copy" for the printer about the fish- 
erman baiting his hook with a giant's tail instead of 
a dragon's ? It is the automatic fellow, — Me-Num- 
ber-Two of our dual personality, — who does these 
things, who forgets the message Me - Number - One 
sends down to him from the cerebral convolutions, and 
substitutes a wrong word for the right one. I suppose 
Me - Number - Two will " sass back," and swear that 
"giant's" was the message which came down from 
headquarters. He is always doing the wrong thing 
and excusing himself. Who blows out the gas instead 
of shutting it off ? Who puts the key in the desk and 
fastens it tight with the spring lock ? Do you mean 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 155 

to sav that tlie upper Me, the Me of the true thinking- 
marrow, the convolutions of the brain, does not know 
better ? Of course he does, and Me - Number - Two is 
a careless servant, who remembers some old direction, 
and follows that instead of the one just given. 

Number Seven demurred to this, and I am not sure 
that he is wrong in so doing. He maintains that the 
automatic fellow always does just what he is told to 
do. Number Five is disposed to agree with him. We 
will talk over the question. 

But come, now, why should not a giant have a tail 
as well as a dragon ? Linn reus admitted the homo 
caiidatus into his anthropological catalogue. The 
human embiyo has a very well marked caudal append- 
age ; that is, the vertebral column appears prolonged, 
just as it is in a young quadruped. During the late 
session of the Medical Congress at Washington, my 
friend Dr. Priestley, a distinguished London physician, 
of the highest character and standing, showed me the 
photograph of a small boy, some three or four years 
old, who had a very respectable little tail, which would 
have passed muster on a pig, and would have made 
a frog or a toad ashamed of himself. I have never 
heard what became of the little boy, nor have I looked 
in the books or journals to find out if there are similar 
cases on record, but I have no doubt that there are 
others. And if boys may have this additional orna- 
ment to their vertebral columns, why not men? And 
if men, why not giants ? So I may not have made a 
very bad blunder, after all, and my reader has learned 
something about the homo caiidatus as spoken of by 
Linnaeus, and as shown me in photograph by Dr. 
Priestley. This child is a candidate for the vacant 
place of Missing Link. 



156 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

In accounting for the blunders, and even gross 
blunders, which, sooner or later, one who writes much 
is pretty sure to commit, I must not forget the part 
played by the blind spot or idiotic area in the brain, 
which I have already described. 

The most knowing persons we meet with are some= 
times at fault. Non omnia ijossumus omnes is not a 
new nor profound axiom, but it is well to remember it 
as a counterpoise to that other truly American saying 
of the late Mr. Samuel Patch, " Some things can be 
done as well as others." Yes, some things, but not all 
things. We all know men and women who hate to 
admit their ignorance of anything. Like Talkative in 
" Pilgrim's Progress, " they are ready to converse of 
" things heavenly or things earthly ; things moral or 
things evangelical ; things sacred or things profane ; 
things past or things to come ; things foreign or things 
at home ; things more essential or things circumstan- 
tial." 

Talkative is apt to be a shallow fellow, and to say 
foolish things about matters he only half understands, 
and yet he has his place in society. The specialists 
would grow to be intolerable, were they not counter- 
poised to some degree by the people of general intelli- 
gence. The man who knows too much about one 
particular subject is liable to become a terrible social 
infliction. Some of the worst bores (to use plain 
language) we ever meet with are recognized as ex- 
perts of high grade in their respective departmentSo 
Beware of making so much as a pinhole in the dam 
that holds back their knowledge. They ride their 
hobbies without bit or bridle. A poet on Pegasus, 
reciting his own verses, is hardly more to be dreaded 
than a mounted specialist. 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 157 

One of the best offices which women perform for 
men is that of tasting books for them. They may or 
may not be profound students, — some of them are ; 
but we do not expect to meet women like Mrs. Somer- 
ville, or Caroline Herschel, or Maria Mitchell at every 
dinner -table or afternoon tea. But give your elect 
lady a pile of books to look over for you, and she will 
tell you what they have for her and for you in less 
time than you would have wasted in stupefying your- 
self over a single volume. 

One of the encouraging signs of the times is the 
condensed and abbreviated form in which knowledge 
is presented to the general reader. The short biog- 
raphies of historic personages, of which within the 
past few years many have been published, have been 
a great relief to the large class of readers who want 
to know something, but not too much, about them. 

What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed 
with the feeling that there are a thousand new books 
he ought to read, while life is only long enough for 
him to attempt to read a hundred ? 

Many readers remember what old Rogers, the poet, 
said : " When I hear a new book talked about or have 
it pressed upon me, I read an old one." Happy the 
man who finds his rest in the pages of some favorite 
classic ! I know no reader more to be envied than 
that friend of mine who for many years has given his 
days and nights to the loving study of Horace. After 
a certain period in life, it is always with an effort that 
we admit a new author into the inner circle of our 
intimates. The Parisian omnibuses, as I remember 
them half a century ago, — they may still keep to the 
same habit, for aught that I know, — used to put up 
the sign " Complet " as soon as they were full. Our 



158 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

public conveyances are never full until the natural 
atmospheric pressure of sixteen pounds to the square 
inch is doubled, in the close packing of the human 
sardines that fill the all-accommodating vehicles. A 
new-comer, however well mannered and well dressed, 
is not very welcome under these circumstances. In 
the same way, our tables are full of books half read 
and books we feel that we must read. And here come 
in two thick volumes, with uncut leaves, in small type, 
with many pages, and many lines to a page, — a book 
that must be read and ought to be read at once. What 
a relief to hand it over to the lovely keeper of your 
literary conscience, who will tell you all that you will 
most care to know about it, and leave you free to 
plunge into your beloved volume, in which you are 
ever finding new beauties, and from which you rise 
refreshed, as if you had just come from the cool waters 
of Hippocrene ! The stream of modern literature rep- 
resented by the books and periodicals on the crowded 
counters is a turbulent and clamorous torrent, dashing 
along among the rocks of criticism, over the pebbles 
of the world's daily events ; trying to make itself seen 
and heard amidst the hoarse cries of the politicians and 
the rumbling wheels of traffic. The classic is a still 
lakelet, a mountain tarn, fed by springs that never 
fail, its surface never ruffled by storms, — always the 
same, always smiling a welcome to its visitor. Such 
is Horace to my friend. To his eye " Lydia, die per 
omnes " is as familiar as " Pater noster qui es in 
ccelis " to that of a pious Catholic. " Integer vitce" 
which he has put into manly English, his Horace 
opens to as Watt's hymn-book opens to " From all 
that dwell below the skies." The more he reads, the 
more he studies his author, the richer are the treasures 



OYER THE TEACUPS. 159 

he finds. And what Horace is to him, Homer, or 
Virgil, or Dante is to many a quiet reader, sick to 
death of the unending train of bookmakers. 

I have some curious books in my library, a few of 
which I should like to say something about to The 
Teacups, when they have no more immediately press< 
ing subjects before them. A library of a few thou- 
sand volumes ought always to have some books in it 
which the owner almost never opens, yet with whose 
backs he is so well acquainted that he feels as if he 
knew something of their contents. They are like 
those persons whom we meet in our daily walks, with 
whose faces and figures, whose summer and winter 
garments, whose walking-sticks and umbrellas even, 
we feel acquainted, and yet whose names, whose busi- 
ness, whose residences, we know nothing about. Some 
of these books are so formidable in their dimensions, 
so rusty and crabbed in their aspect, that it takes a 
considerable amount of courage to attack them. 

I will ask Delilah to bring down from my library a 
very thick, stout volume, bound in parchment, and 
standing on the lower shelf, next the fireplace. The 
pretty handmaid knows my books almost as if she 
were my librarian, and I don't doubt she would have 
found it if I had given only the name on the back. 

Delilah returned presently, with the heavy quarto 
in her arms. It was a pleasing sight, — the old book 
in the embrace of the fresh young damsel. I felt, on 
looking at them, as I did when I followed the slip of 
a girl who conducted us in the Temple, that ancient 
building in the heart of London. The long-enduring 
monuments of the dead do so mock the fleeting pres- 
ence of the living ! 

Is n ? t this book enough to scare any of you ? I said, 



160 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

as Delilah damped it down upon the table. The 
teacups jumped from their saucers as it thumped on 
the board. Danielis Georgii Morhofii Polyhistor, 
Literarius, JPhilosophlcus et Poeticus. Lubecce 
MDCCXXXIIL Perhaps I should not have ven- 
tured to ask you to look at this old volume, if it had 
not been for the fact that Dr. Johnson mentions Mor- 
hof as the author to whom he was specially indebted ,, 
— more, I think, than to any other. It is a grand 
old encyclopaedic summary of all the author knew 
about pretty nearly everything, full of curious inter- 
est, but so strangely mediaeval, so utterly antiquated 
in most departments of knowledge, that it is hard to 
believe the volume came from the press at a time 
when persons whom I well remember were living. Is 
it possible that the books which have been for me 
what Morhof was for Dr. Johnson can look like that 
to the student of the year 1990 ? 

Morhof was a believer in magic and the transmuta- 
tion of metals. There was always something fascinat- 
ing to me in the old books of alchemy. I have felt 
that the poetry of science lost its wings when the last 
powder of projection had been cast into the crucible, 
and the fire of the last transmutation furnace went 
out. Perhaps I am wrong in implying that alchemy 
is an extinct folly. It existed in New England's early 
days, as we learn from the "Winthrop papers, and I see 
no reason why gold-making should not have its votaries 
as well as other popular delusions. 

Among the essays of Morhof is one on the " Para- 
doxes of the Senses." That title brought to mind the 
recollection of another work I have been meaning to 
say something about, at some time when you were in 
the listening mood. The book I refer to is " A 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 161 

Budget of Paradoxes," by Augustus De Morgan, De 
Morgan is well remembered as a very distinguished 
mathematician, whose works have kept his name in 
high honor to the present time. The book I am 
speaking of was published by his widow, and is largely 
made up of letters received by him and his comments 
upon them. Few persons ever read it through. Few 
intelligent readers ever took it up and laid it down 
without taking a long draught of its singular and in- 
teresting contents. The letters are mostly from that 
class of persons whom we call " cranks," in our famil- 
iar language. 

At this point Number Seven interrupted me by 
calling out, " Give us some of those cranks' letters. 
A crank is a man who does his own thinking. I had 
a relation who was called a crank. I believe I have 
been spoken of as one myself. That is what you have 
to expect if you invent anything that puts an old ma- 
chine out of fashion, or solve a problem that has puz- 
zled all the world up to your time. There never was 
a religion founded but its Messiah was called a crank. 
There never was an idea started that woke up men 
out of their stupid indifference but its originator was 
spoken of as a crank. Do you want to know why 
that name is given to the men who do most for the 
world's progress ? I will tell you. It is because 
cranks make all the wheels in all the machinery of 
the world go round. What would a steam-engine be 
without a crank ? I suppose the first fool that looked 
on the first crank that was ever made asked what that 
crooked, queer-looking thing was good for. When 
the wheels got moving he found out. Tell us some- 
thing about that book which has so much to say con- 
cerning cranks." 



162 OYER THE TEACUPS. 

Hereupon I requested Delilah to carry back Mor- 
hof, and replace him in the wide gap he had left in 
the bookshelf. She was then to find and bring down 
the volume I had been speaking of. 

Delilah took the wisdom of the seventeenth century 
in her arms, and departed on her errand. The book 
she brought down was given me some years ago by 
a gentleman who had sagaciously foreseen that it was 
just one of those works which I might hesitate about 
buying, but should be well pleased to own. He 
guessed well ; the book has been a great source of 
instruction and entertainment to me. I wonder that 
so much time and cost should have been expended 
upon a work which might have borne a title like the 
Encomium Moriae of Erasmus ; and yet it is such a 
wonderful museum of the productions of the squinting 
brains belonging to the class of persons commonly 
known as cranks that we could hardly spare one of 
its five hundred octavo pages. 

Those of us who are in the habit of receiving let- 
ters from all sorts of would-be-literary people — letters 
of inquiry, many of them with reference to .matters 
we are supposed to understand — can readily see how 
it was that Mr. De Morgan, never too busy to be 
good-natured with the people who pestered — or 
amused — him with their queer fancies, received such 
a number of letters from persons who thought they 
had made great discoveries, from those who felt that 
they and their inventions and contrivances had been 
overlooked, and who sought in his large charity of 
disposition and great receptiveness a balm for their 
wounded feelings and a ray of hope for their darkened 
prospects. 

The book before u? is> made up from papers pub« 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 163 

lished in "The Athenaeum," with additions by the 
author. Soon after opening it we come to names with 
which we are familiar, the first of these, that of Cor- 
nelius Agrippa, being connected with the occult and 
mystic doctrines dealt with by many of De Morgan's 
correspondents. But the name most likely to arrest 
us is that of Giordano Bruno, the same philosopher, 
heretic, and martyr whose statue has recently been 
erected in Rome, to the great horror of the Pope and 
his prelates in the Old World and in the New. De 
Morgan's pithy account of him will interest the com- 
pany : " Giordano Bruno was all paradox. He was, 
as has been said, a vorticist before Descartes, an opti- 
mist before Leibnitz, a Copernican before Galileo. It 
would be easy to collect a hundred strange opinions of 
his. He was born about 1550, and was roasted alive 
at Rome, February 17, 1600, for the maintenance and 
defence of the Holy Church, and the rights and liber- 
ties of the same." 

Number Seven could not contain himself when the 
reading had reached this point. He rose from his 
chair, and tinkled his spoon against the side of his 
teacup. It may have been a fancy, but I thought it 
returned a sound which Mr. Richard Briggs would 
have recognized as implying an organic defect. But 
Number Seven did not seem to notice it, or, if he did, 
to mind it. 

" Why did n't we all have a chance to help erect 
that statue ? " he cried. " A murdered heretic at the 
beginning of the seventeenth century, a hero of know- 
ledge in the nineteenth, — I drink to the memory of 
the roasted crank, Giordano Bruno ! " 

Number Seven lifted his teacup to his lips, and 
most of us followed his example. 



164 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

After this outburst of emotion and eloquence had 
subsided, and the teaspoons lay quietly in their sau- 
cers, I went on with my extract from the book I had 
in hand. 

I think, I said, that the passage which follows will 
be new and instructive to most of the company. De 
Morgan's interpretation of the cabalistic sentence, 
made up as you will find it, is about as ingenious a 
piece of fanciful exposition as you will be likely to 
meet with anywhere in any book, new or old. I am 
the more willing to mention it as it suggests a puzzle 
which some of the company may like to work upon. 
Observe the character and position of the two dis- 
tinguished philosophers who did not think their time 
thrown away in laboring at this seemingly puerile 
task. 

"There is a kind of Cabbala Alphabetica which 
the investigators of the numerals in words would do 
well to take up ; it is the formation of sentences which 
contain all the letters of the alphabet, and each only 
once. No one has done it with v and j treated as con- 
sonants ; but you and I can do it. Dr. Whewell and 
I amused ourselves some years ago with attempts. 
He could not make sense, though he joined words : 
he gave me Phiz, styx, wrong, buck, flame, quiz. 

" I gave him the following, which he agreed was 
4 admirable sense,' — I certainly think the words 
would never have come together except in this way : 
I quartz pyx who fling muck beds. I long thought 
that no human being could say this under any circum- 
stances. At last I happened to be reading a religious 
writer, — as he thought himself, — who threw asper- 
sions on his opponents thick and threefold. Heyday ! 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 165 

came into my head ; this fellow flings muck beds ; he 
must be a quartz pyx. And then I remembered that 
a pyx is a sacred vessel, and quartz is a hard stone, — 
as hard as the heart of a religious foe-curser. So that 
the line is the motto of the ferocious sectarian who 
turns his religious vessels into mud-holders, for the 
benefit of those who will not see what he sees." 

There are several other sentences given, in which 
all the letters (except v and j as consonants) are 
employed, of which " the following is the best : Get 
nymph ; quiz sad brow ; fix luck, — which in more 
sober English would be, Marry ; be cheerful ; watch 
your business. There is more edification, more reli- 
gion, in this than in all the 666 interpretations put to- 
gether." 

There is something very pleasant in the thought of 
these two sages playing at jackstraws with the letters 
of the alphabet. The task which De Morgan and Dr. 
Whewell, " the omniscient," set themselves would not 
be unworthy of our own ingenious scholars, and it 
might be worth while for some one of our popular 
periodicals to offer a prize for the best sentence using 
up the whole alphabet, under the same conditions as 
those submitted to by our two philosophers. 

This whole book of De Morgan's seems to me full 
of instruction. There is too much of it, no doubt; yet 
one can put up with the redundancy for the sake of 
the multiplicity of shades of credulity and self-decep- 
tion it displays in broad daylight. I suspect many of 
us are conscious of a second personality in our com= 
plex nature, which has many traits resembling those 
found in the writers of the letters addressed to Mr. 
De Morgan. 

1 have not ventured very often nor very deeply into 



166 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

the field of metaphysics, but if I were disposed to 
make any claim in that direction, it would be the 
recognition of the squinting brain, the introduction of 
the term " cerebricity " corresponding to electricity, 
the idiotic area in the brain or thinking-marrow, and 
my studies of the second member in the partnership 
of I-My-Self & Co. I add the Co. with especial refer- 
ence to a very interesting article in a late Scribner, by 
my friend Mr. William James. In this article the 
reader will find a full exposition of the doctrine of 
plural personality illustrated by striking cases. I have 
long ago noticed and referred to the fact of the strat- 
ification of the currents of thought in three layers, one 
over the other. I have recognized that where there 
are two individuals talking together there are really 
six personalities engaged in the conversation. But 
the distinct, separable, independent individualities, tak- 
ing up conscious life one after the other, are brought 
out by Mr. James and the authorities to which he re- 
fers as I have not elsewhere seen them developed. 

Whether we shall ever find the exact position of 
the idiotic centre or area in the brain (if such a spot 
exists) is uncertain. We know exactly where the 
blind spot of the eye is situated, and can demonstrate 
it anatomically and physiologically. But we have only 
analogy to lead us to infer the possible or even prob- 
able existence of an insensible spot in the thinking- 
centre. If there is a focal point where consciousness 
is at its highest development, it would not be strange 
if near by there should prove to be an anaesthetic dis- 
trict or limited space where no report from the senses 
was intelligently interpreted. But all this is mere 
hypothesis. 

Notwithstanding the fact that I am nominally the 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 167 

head personage of the circle of Teacups, I do not pre- 
tend or wish to deny that we all look to Number Five 
as our chief adviser in all the literary questions that 
come before us. She reads more and better than any 
of us. She is always ready to welcome the first sign 
of genius, or of talent which approaches genius. She 
makes short work with all the pretenders whose only 
excuse for appealing to the public is that they " want 
to be famous." She is one of the very few persons to 
whom I am willing to read any one of my own pro- 
ductions while it is yet in manuscript, unpublished. 1 
know she is disposed to make more of it than it de- 
serves ; but, on the other hand, there are degrees in 
her scale of judgment, and I can distinguish very 
easily what delights her from what pleases only, or is, 
except for her kindly feeling to the writer, indifferent, 
or open to severe comment. What is curious is that 
she seems to have no literary aspirations, no desire to 
be known as a writer. Yet Number Five has more 
esprit, more sparkle, more sense in her talk, than many 
a famous authoress from whom we should expect bril- 
liant conversation. 

There are mysteries about Number Five. I am not 
going to describe her personally. Whether she be- 
longs naturally among the bright young people, or in 
the company of the maturer persons, who have had a 
good deal of experience of the world, and have reached 
the wisdom of the riper decades without losing the 
graces of the earlier ones, it would be hard to say 
The men and women, young and old, who throng about 
her forget their own ages. " There is no such thing 
as time in her presence," said the Professor, the other 
day, in speaking of her. Whether the Professor is 
in love with her or not is more than I can say, but 



168 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

I am sure that he goes to her for literary sympathy 
and counsel, just as I do. The reader may remem- 
ber what Number Five said about the possibility of 
her getting a sprained ankle, and her asking the 
young Doctor whether he felt equal to taking charge 
of her if she did. I would not for the world insinuate 
that he wishes she would slip and twist her foot a 
little, — just a little, you know, but so that it would 
have to be laid on a pillow in a chair, and inspected, 
and bandaged, and delicately manipulated. There 
was a banana-skin which she might naturally have 
trodden on, in her way to the tea-table. Nobody 
can suppose that it was there except by the most in- 
nocent of accidents. There are people who will sus- 
pect everybody. The idea of the Doctor's putting 
that banana-skin there ! People love to talk in that 
silly way about doctors. 

Number Five had promised to read us a narrative 
which she thought would interest some of the com- 
pany. Who wrote it she did not tell us, but I inferred 
from various circumstances that she had known the 
writer. She read the story most effectively in her 
rich, musical voice. I noticed that when it came to 
the sounds of the striking clock, the ringing of the 
notes was so like that which reaches us from some far- 
off cathedral tower that we wanted to bow our heads, 
as if we had just heard a summons to the Angelus. 
This was the short story that Number Five read to 
The Teacups : — 

I have somewhere read this anecdote. Louis the 
Fourteenth was looking out, one day, from a window 
of his palace of Saint-Germain. It was a beautiful 
landscape which spread out before him, and the mon- 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 169 

arch, exulting in health, strength, and the splendors 
of his exalted position, felt his bosom swell with emo- 
tions of pride and happiness. Presently he noticed 
the towers of a church in the distance, above the tree- 
tops. " What building is that ? " he asked. " May 
it please your Majesty, that is the Church of St. Denis, 
where your royal ancestors have been buried for many 
generations." The answer did not u please his Eoyal 
Majesty." There, then, was the place where he too 
was to lie and moulder in the dust. He turned, sick 
at heart, from the window, and was uneasy until he 
had built him another palace, from which he could 
never be appalled by that fatal prospect. 

Something like the experience of Louis the Four- 
teenth was that of the owner of 

THE TERRIBLE CLOCK. 

I give the story as transcribed from the original 
manuscript : — 

The clock was bequeathed to me by an old friend 
who had recently died. His mind had been a good 
deal disordered in the later period of his life. This 
clock, I am told, seemed to have a strange fascination 
for him. His eyes were fastened on it during the last 
hours of his life. He died just at midnight. The 
clock struck twelve, the nurse told me, as he drew 
his last breath, and then, without any known cause, 
stopped, with both hands upon the hour. 

It- is a complex and costly piece of mechanism. The 
escapement is in front, so that every tooth is seen as 
it frees itself. It shows the phases of the moon, the 
month of the year, the day of the month, and the day 
of the week, as well as the hour and minute of the 
day. 



170 OVEK THE TEACUPS. 

I had not owned it a week before I began to per- 
ceive the same kind of fascination as that which its 
former owner had experienced. This gradually grew 
upon me, and presently led to trains of thought which 
became at first unwelcome, then worrying, and at last 
unendurable. I began by taking offence at the moon, 
I did not like to see that " something large and smooth 
and round," so like the skull which little Peterkin 
picked up on the field of Blenheim. " How many 
times," I kept saying to myself, " is that wicked old 
moon coming up to stare at me ? " I could not stand 
it. I stopped a part of the machinery, and the moon 
went into permanent eclipse. By and by the sounds 
of the infernal machine began to trouble and pursue 
me. They talked to me ; more and more their lan- 
guage became that of articulately speaking men. They 
twitted me with the rapid flight of time. They hur- 
ried me, as if I had not a moment to lose. Quick ! 
Quick ! Quick ■ as each tooth released itself from the 
escapement. And as I looked and listened there could 
not be any mistake about it. I heard Quick ! Quick ! 
Quick ! as plainly, at least, as I ever heard a word 
from the phonograph. I stood watching the dial one 
day, — it was near one o'clock, — and a strange at- 
traction held me fastened to the spot. Presently some- 
thing appeared to trip or stumble inside of the infer- 
nal mechanism. I waited for the sound I knew was 
to follow. How nervous I got! It seemed to me 
that it would never strike. At last the minute-hand 
reached the highest point of the dial. Then there was 
a little stir among the works, as there is in a congre- 
gation as it rises to receive the benediction. It was 
no form of blessing which rung out those deep, almost 
sepulchral tones. But the word they uttered could 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 171 

not be mistaken. I can hear its prolonged, solemn 
vibrations as if I were standing before the clock at 
this moment. 

Gone ! Yes, I said to myself, gone, — its record 
made up to be opened in eternity. 

I stood still, staring vaguely at the dial as in a 
trance. And as the next hour creeps stealthily up, it 
starts all at once, and cries aloud, Gone ! — Gone ! 
The sun siuks lower, the hour-hand creeps downward 
with it, until I hear the thrice-repeated monosyllable, 
Gone ! — Gone ! — Gone ! So on through the dark- 
ening hours, until at the dead of night the long roll is 
called, and with the last Gone ! the latest of the long 
procession that filled the day follows its ghostly com- 
panions into the stillness and darkness of the past. 

I silenced the striking part of the works. Still the 
escapement kept repeating, Quick ! Quick ! Quick ! 
Still the long minute-hand, like the dart in the grasp 
of Death, as we see it in Roubiliac's monument to 
Mrs. Nightingale, among the tombs of Westminster 
Abbey, stretched itself out, ready to transfix each hour 
as it passed, and make it my last. I sat by the clock 
to watch the leap from one day of the week to the 
next. Then would come, in natural order, the long- 
stride from one month to the following one. 

I could endure it no longer. " Take that clock 
an: ay ! " I said. They took it away. They took me 
away, too, — they thought I needed country air. The 
sounds and motions still pursued me in imagination. 
I was very nervous when I came here. The walks are 
pleasant, but the walls seem to me unnecessarily high. 
The boarders are numerous ; a little miscellaneous, I 
think. But we have the Queen, and the President 
of the United States, and several other distinguished 



172 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

persons, if we may trust what they tell about them- 
selves. 

After we had listened to Number Five's story, I was 
requested to read a couple of verses written by me 
when the guest of my friends, whose name is hinted 
by the title prefixed to my lines. 

LA MAISON D'OR. 
(bar harbor.) 

From this fair home behold on either side 
The restful mountains or the restless sea: 

So the warm sheltering walls of life divide 
Time and its tides from still eternity. 

Look on the waves : their stormy voices teach 
That not on earth may toil and struggle cease. 

Look on the mountains : better far than speech 
Their silent promise of eternal peace. 



VIII. 

I had intended to devote this particular report to 
an account of my replies to certain questions which 
have been addressed to me, — questions which I have 
a right to suppose interest the public, and which, there- 
fore, I was justified in bringing before The Teacups, 
and presenting to the readers of these articles. 

Some may care for one of these questions, and some 
for another. A good many young people think noth- 
ing about life as it presents itself in the far horizon, 
bounded by the snowy ridges of threescore and the 
dim peaks beyond that remote barrier. Again, there 
are numbers of persons who know nothing at all about 
the Jews ; while, on the other hand, there are those 
who can, or think they can, detect the Israelitish blood 
in many of their acquaintances who believe themselves 
of the purest Japhetic origin, and are full of preju- 
dices about the Semitic race. 

I do not mean to be cheated out of my intentions. 
I propose to answer my questioners on the two points 
just referred to, but I find myself so much interested 
in the personal affairs of The Teacups that I must deal 
with them before attacking those less exciting sub- 
jects. There is no use, let me say here, in addressing 
to me letters marked " personal, " " private, " " confi- 
dential, " and so forth, asking me how I came to know 
what happened in certain conversations of which I 
shall give a partial account. If there is a very sensi- 



174 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

tive phonograph lying about here and there in unsus- 
pected corners, that might account for some part of 
my revelations. If Delilah, whose hearing is of almost, 
supernatural delicacy, reports to me what she over- 
hears, it might explain a part of the mystery. I do 
not want to accuse Delilah, but a young person who 
assures me she can hear my watch ticking in my 
pocket, when I am in the next room, might undoubt- 
edly tell many secrets, if so disposed. Number Five 
is pretty nearly omniscient, and she and I are on the 
best terms with each other. These are all the hints I 
shall give you at present. 

The Teacups of whom the least has been heard at 
our table are the Tutor and the Musician. The Tutor 
is a modest young man, kept down a little, I think, by 
the presence of older persons, like the Professor and 
myself. I have met him several times, of late, walk- 
ing with different lady Teacups : once with the Amer- 
ican Annex ; twice with the English Annex ; once 
with the two Annexes together ; once with Number 
Five. 

I have mentioned the fact that the Tutor is a poet 
as among his claims to our attention. I must add that 
I do not think any the worse of him for expressing his 
emotions and experiences in verse. For though rhym- 
ing is often a bad sign in a young man, especially if 
he is already out of his teens, there are those to whom 
it is as natural, one might almost say as necessary, as 
it is to a young bird to fly. One does not care to see 
barnyard fowls tumbling about in trying to use their 
wings. They have a pair of good, stout drumsticks, 
and had better keep to them, for the most part. But 
that feeling does not apply to } r oung eagles, or even to 
young swallows and sparrows. The Tutor is by no 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 175 

means one of those ignorant, silly, conceited phrase- 
tinklers, who live on the music of their own jingling 
syllables and the flattery of their foolish friends. I 
think Number Five must appreciate him. He is sin- 
cere, warm-hearted, — his poetry shows that, — not in 
haste to be famous, and he looks to me as if he only 
wanted love to steady him. With one of those two 
young girls he ought certainly to be captivated, if he 
is not already. Twice walking with the English An- 
nex, I met him, and they were so deeply absorbed in 
conversation they hardly noticed me. He has been 
talking over the matter with Number Five, who is 
just the kind of person for a confidante. 

" I know I feel very lonely, " he was saying, " and 
I only wish I felt sure that I could make another per- 
son happy. My life would be transfigured if I could 
find such a one, whom I could love well enough to 
give my life to her, — for her, if that were needful, — 
and who felt an affinity for me, if any one could." 

" And why not j^our English maiden ? " said Num- 
ber Five. 

" What makes you think I care more for her .than 
for her American friend ? " said the Tutor. 

" Why, have n't I met you walking with her, and 
did n't you both seem greatly interested in the subject 
you were discussing ? I thought, of course, it was 
something more or less sentimental that you were 
talking about." 

" I was explaining that ' enclitic de ' in Browning's 
Grammarian's Funeral. I don't think there was any- 
thing very sentimental about that. She is an inquisi- 
tive creature, that English girl. She is very fond of 
asking me questions, — in fact, both of them are. 
There is one curious difference between them : the 



176 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

English girl settles down into her answers and is 
quiet ; the American girl is never satisfied with yes- 
terday's conclusions ; she is always reopening old 
questions in the light of some new fact or some novel 
idea, I suppose that people bred from childhood to 
lean their backs against the wall of the Creed and the 
church catechism find it hard to sit up straight on the 
republican stool, which obliges them to stiffen their 
own backs. Which of these two girls would be the 
safest choice for a young man ? I should really like 
to hear what answer you would make if I consulted 
you seriously, with a view to my own choice, — on the 
supposition that there was a fair chance that either of 
them might be won." 

" The one you are in love with, " answered Number 
Five. 

" But what if it were a case of ' How happy could 
I be with either ' ? Which offers the best chance of 
happiness, — a marriage between two persons of the 
same country, or a marriage where one of the parties 
is of foreign birth? Everything else being equal, 
which is best for an American to marry, an American 
or an English girl? We need not confine the ques- 
tion to those two young persons, but put it more gen- 
erally." 

" There are reasons on both sides, " answered Num- 
ber Five. " I have often talked this matter over with 
The Dictator. This is the way he speaks about it. — 
English blood is apt to tell well on the stock upon 
which it is engrafted. Over and over again he has 
noticed finely grown specimens of human beings, and 
on inquiry has found that one or both of the parents 
or grandparents were of British origin. The chances 
are that the descendants of the imported stock will be 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 



177 



of a richer organization, more florid, more muscular, 
with mellower voices, than the native whose blood has 
been unmingled with that of new emigrants since the 
earlier colonial times. — So talks The Dictator. — I 
myself think the American will find his English wife 
concentrates herself more readily and more exclusively 
on her husband, — for the obvious reason that she is 
obliged to live mainly in him. I remember hearing 
an old friend of my early days say, ' A woman does 
not bear transplanting.' It does not do to trust these 
old sayings, and yet they almost always have some 
foundation in the experience of mankind, which has 
repeated them from generation to generation. Happy 
is the married woman of foreign birth who can say 
to her husband, as Andromache said to Hector, after 
enumerating all the dear relatives she had lost, — 

* Yet while my Hector still survives, I see 
My father, mother, brethren, all in thee ! ' 

How many a sorrowing wife, exiled from her native 
country, dreams of the mother she shall see no more ! 
How many a widow, in a strange land, wishes that her 
poor, worn-out body could be laid among her kinsfolk, 
in the little churchyard where she used to gather 
daisies in her childhood ! It takes a great deal of love 
to keep down the ' climbing sorrow ' that swells up in 
a woman's throat when such memories seize upon her, 
in her moments of desolation. But if a foreign-born 
woman does willingly give up all for a man, and never 
looks backward, like Lot's wife, she is a prize that it 
is worth running a risk to gain, — that is, if she has 
the making of a good woman in her ; and a few years 
will go far towards naturalizing her." 

The Tutor listened to Number Five with much aj> 



178 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

parent interest. " And now, " he said, " what do you 
think of her companion ? " 

" A charming girl for a man of a quiet, easy tem- 
perament. The great trouble is with her voice. It is 
pitched a full note too high. It is aggressive, disturb- 
ing, and would wear out a nervous man without his 
ever knowing what was the matter with him. A 
good many crazy Northern people would recover their 
reason if they could live for a year or two among the 
blacks of the Southern States. But the penetrating, 
perturbing quality of the voices of many of our 
Northern women has a great deal to answer for in the 
way of determining love and friendship. You remem- 
ber that dear friend of ours who left us not long since ? 
If there were more voices like hers, the world would 
be a different place to live in. I do not believe any 
man or woman ever came within the range of those 
sweet, tranquil tones without being hushed, captivated, 
entranced I might almost say, by their calming, sooth- 
ing influence. Can you not imagine the tones in which 
those words, 'Peace, be still,' were spoken? Such 
was the effect of the voice to which but a few weeks 
ago we were listening. It is hard to believe that it 
has died out of human consciousness. Can such a 
voice be spared from that world of happiness to which 
we fondly look forward, where we love to dream, if we 
do not believe with assured conviction, that whatever 
is loveliest in this our mortal condition shall be with 
us again as an undying possession? Your English 
friend has a very agreeable voice, round, mellow, 
cheery, and her articulation is charming. Other things 
being equal, I think you, who are, perhaps, oversensi- 
tive, would live from two to three years longer with 
her than with the other. I suppose a man who lived 






OVER THE TEACUPS. 179 

within hearing of a murmuring brook would find his 
life shortened if a sawmill were set up within earshot 
of his dwelling." 

" And so you advise me to make love to the Eng- 
lish girl, do you ? " asked the Tutor. 

Number Five laughed. It was not a loud laugh, — 
she never laughed noisily; it was not a very hearty 
lauo-h ; the idea did not seem to amuse her much. 

M No," she said, " I won't take the responsibility. 
Perhaps this is a case in which the true reading of 
Gay's line would be 

How happy could I be with neither. 

There are several young women in the world besides 
our two Annexes." 

I question whether the Tutor had asked those ques- 
tions very seriously, and I doubt if Number Five 
thought he was very much in earnest. 

One of The Teacups reminded me that I had prom- 
ised to say something of my answers to certain ques- 
tions. So I began at once : — 

I have given the name of brain - tappers to the 
literary operatives who address persons whose names 
are well known to the public, asking their opinions 
or their experiences on subjects which are at the time 
of general interest. They expect a literary man or a 
scientific expert to furnish them materials for sympo- 
sia and similar articles, to be used by them for their 
own special purposes. Sometimes they expect to pay 
for the information furnished them ; at other times, 
the honor of being included in a list of noted person- 
ages who have received similar requests is thought 
sufficient compensation. The object with which the 



180 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

brain-tapper puts his questions may be a purely be- 
nevolent and entirely disinterested one. Such was the 
object of some of those questions which I have received 
and answered. There are other cases, in which the 
brain-tapper is acting much as those persons do who 
stop a physician in the street to talk with him about 
their livers or stomachs, or other internal arrange- 
ments, instead of going to his office and consulting 
him, expecting to pay for his advice. Others are 
more like those busy women who, having the gener- 
ous intention of making a handsome present to their 
pastor, at as little expense as may be, send to all their 
neighbors and acquaintances for scraps of various ma- 
terials, out of which the imposing " bedspread " or 
counterpane is to be elaborated. 

That is all very well so long as old pieces of stuff 
are all they call for, but it is a different matter to ask 
for clippings out of new and uncut rolls of cloth. So 
it is one thing to ask an author for liberty to use ex- 
tracts from his published writings, and it is a very 
different thing to expect him to write expressly for 
the editor's or compiler's piece of literary patchwork. 

I have received many questions within the last year 
or two, some of which I am willing to answer, but 
prefer to answer at my own time, in my own way, 
through my customary channel of communication with 
the public. I hope I shall not be misunderstood as 
implying any reproach against the inquirers who, in 
order to get at facts which ought to be known, apply 
to all whom they can reach for information. Their 
inquisitiveness is not always agreeable or welcome, 
but we ought to be glad that there are mousing fact- 
hunters to worry us with queries to which, for the 
sake of the public, we are bound to give our atten- 
tion. Let me begin with my brain-tappers. 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 181 

And first, as the papers have given publicity to the 
fact that I, The Dictator of this tea-table, have reached 
the age of threescore years and twenty, I am requested 
to give information as to how I managed to do it, and 
to explain just how they can go and do likewise. I 
think I can lay down a few rules that will help them 
to the desired result. There is no certainty in these 
biological problems, but there are reasonable probabiL 
ities uj3on which it is safe to act. 

The first thing to be done is, some years before 
birth, to advertise for a couple of parents both belong- 
ing to long-lived families. Especially let the mother 
come of a race in which octogenarians and nonagena- 
rians are very common phenomena. There are prac- 
tical difficulties in following out this suggestion, but 
possibly the forethought of your progenitors, or that 
concurrence of circumstances which we call accident, 
may have arranged this for you. 

Do not think that a robust organization is any war- 
rant of long life, nor that a frail and slight bodily 
constitution necessarily means scanty length of days. 
Many a strong-limbed young man and many a bloom- 
ing young woman have I seen failing and dropping 
away in or before middle life, and many a delicate 
and slightly constituted person outliving the athletes 
and the beauties of their generation. Whether the 
excessive development of the muscular system is com- 
patible with the best condition of general health is, I 
think, more than doubtful. The muscles are great 
sponges that suck up and make use of large quantities 
of blood, and the other organs must be liable to suffer 
for want of their share. 

One of the Seven Wise Men of Greece boiled his 
wisdom down into two words, fxifikv ayav, — nothing too 



182 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

much. It is a rule which will apply to food, exercise, 
labor, sleep, and, in short, to every part of life. This 
is not so very difficult a matter if one begins in good 
season and forms regular habits. But what if I 
should lay down the rule, Be cheerful ; take all the 
troubles and trials of life with perfect equanimity and 
a smiling countenance ? Admirable directions ! Your 
friend, the curly-haired blonde, with florid complexion, 
round cheeks, the best possible digestion and respira* 
tion, the stomach of an ostrich and the lungs of a 
pearl-diver, finds it perfectly easy to carry them into 
practice. You, of leaden complexion, with black and 
lank hair, lean, hollow-eyed, dyspeptic, nervous, find 
it not so easy to be always hilarious and happy. The 
truth is that the persons of that buoyant disposition 
which comes always heralded by a smile, as a yacht 
driven by a favoring breeze carries a wreath of spar- 
kling foam before her, are born with their happiness 
ready made. They cannot help being cheerful any 
more than their saturnine fellow-mortal can help see- 
ing everything through the cloud he carries with him. 
I give you the precept, then, Be cheerful, for just 
what it is worth, as I would recommend to you to be 
six feet, or at least five feet ten, in stature. You can- 
not settle that matter for yourself, but you can stand 
up straight, and give your five feet five its full value. 
You can help along a little by wearing high-heeled 
shoes. So you can do something to encourage your- 
self in serenity of aspect and demeanor, keeping your 
infirmities and troubles in the background instead of 
making them the staple of your conversation. This 
piece of advice, if followed, may be worth from three 
to five years of the fourscore which you hope to at' 
tain. 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 183 

If, on the other hand, instead of going about cheer- 
ily in society, making the best of everything and as 
far as possible forgetting yonr troubles, yon can make 
up your mind to economize all your stores of vital 
energy, to hoard your life as a miser hoards his 
money, you will stand a fair chance of living until you 
are tired of life, — fortunate if everybody is not tired 
of you. 

One of my prescriptions for longevity may startle 
you somewhat. It is this : Become the subject of a 
mortal disease. Let half a dozen doctors thump you, 
and knead you, and test you in every possible way, 
and render their verdict that you have an internal 
complaint ; they don't know exactly what it is, but it 
will certainly kill you by and by. Then bid farewell 
to the world and shut yourself up for an invalid. If 
you are threescore years old when you begin this mode 
of life, you may very probably last twenty years, and 
there you are, — an octogenarian. In the mean time, 
your friends outside have been dropping off, one after 
another, until you find yourself almost alone, nursing 
your mortal complaint as if it were your baby, hug- 
ging it and kept alive by it, — if to exist is to live. 
Who has not seen cases like this, — a man or a wo- 
man shutting himself or herself up, visited by a doc- 
tor or a succession of doctors (I remember that once, 
in my earlier experience, I was the twenty-seventh 
physician who had been consulted), always taking 
medicine, until everybody was reminded of that impa« 
tient speech of a relative of one of these invalid vam- 
pires who live on the blood of tired-out attendants, 
M I do wish she would get well — or something " f 
Persons who are shut up in that way, confined to their 
chambers, sometimes to their beds, have a very small 



184 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 



amount of vital expenditure, and wear out very little 
of their living substance. They are like lamps with 
half their wicks picked down, and will continue to 
burn when other lamps have used up all their oil. An 
insurance office might make money by taking no risks 
except on lives of persons suffering from mortal dis= 
ease. It is on this principle of economizing the 
powers of life that a very eminent American physician 9 
— Dr. Weir Mitchell, a man of genius, — has founded 
his treatment of certain cases of nervous exhaustion. 

"What have I got to say about temperance, the use 
of animal food, and so forth ? These are questions 
asked me. Nature has proved a wise teacher, as I 
think, in my own case. The older I grow, the less 
use I make of alcoholic stimulants. In fact, I hardly 
meddle with them at all, except a glass or two of 
champagne occasionally. I find that by far the best 
borne of all drinks containing alcohol. I do not sup- 
pose my experience can be the foundation of a univer- 
sal rule. Dr. Holyoke, who lived to be a hundred, 
used habitually, in moderate quantities, a mixture of 
cider, water, and rum. I think, as one grows older, 
less food, especially less animal food, is required. But 
old people have a right to be epicures, if they can af- 
ford it. The pleasures of the palate are among the 
last gratifications of the senses allowed them. We 
begin life as little cannibals, — feeding on the flesh 
and blood of our mothers. We range through all the 
vegetable and animal products of nature, and I sup- 
pose, if the second childhood could return to the food 
of the first, it might prove a wholesome diet. 

What do I say to smoking ? I cannot grudge an 
old man his pipe, but I think tobacco often does a 
good deal of harm to the health, — to the eyes espe- 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 185 

cially, to the nervous system generally, producing head- 
ache, palpitation, and trembling. I myself gave it up 
many years ago. Philosophically speaking, I think 
self-narcotization and self-alcoholization are rather ig- 
noble substitutes for undisturbed self-consciousness 
and unfettered self-control. 

Here is another of those brain-tapping letters, of 
similar character, which I have no objection to answer- 
ing at my own time and in the place which best suits 
me. As the questions must be supposed to be asked 
with a purely scientific and philanthropic purpose, it 
can make little difference when and where they are 
answered. For myself, I prefer our own tea-table to 
the symposia to which I am often invited. I do not 
quarrel with those who invite their friends to a ban- 
quet to which many strangers are expected to contrib- 
ute. It is a very easy and pleasant way of giving an 
entertainment at little cost and with no responsibility. 
Somebody has been writing to me about " Oatmeal 
and Literature," and somebody else wants to know 
whether I have found character influenced by diet ; 
also whether, in my opinion, oatmeal is preferable to 
pie as an American national food. 

In answer to these questions, I should say that I have 
my beliefs and prejudices ; but if I were pressed hard 
for my proofs of their correctness, I should make but a 
poor show in the witness-box. Most assuredly I do 
believe that body and mind are much influenced by 
the kind of food habitually depended upon. I am 
persuaded that a too exclusively porcine diet gives a 
bristly character to the beard and hair, which is bor- 
rowed from the animal whose tissues these stiff-bearded 
compatriots of ours have too largely assimilated. I 



186 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

can never stray among the village people of our windy 
capes without now and then coming upon a human be- 
ing who looks as if he had been split, salted, and 
dried, like the salt-fish which has built up his arid or- 
ganism. If the body is modified by the food which 
nourishes it, the mind and character very certainly will 
be modified by it also. We know enough of their 
close connection with each other to be sure of that, 
without any statistical observations to prove it. 

Do you really want to know " whether oatmeal is 
preferable to pie as an American national food " ? I 
suppose the best answer I can give to your question is 
to tell you what is my own practice. Oatmeal in the 
morning, as an architect lays a bed of concrete to form 
a base for his superstructure. Pie when I can get it ; 
that is, of the genuine sort, for I am not patriotic 
enough to think very highly of the article named after 
the Father of his Country, who was first in war, first 
in peace, — not first in pies, according to my standard. 

There is a very odd prejudice against pie as an ar- 
ticle of diet. It is common to hear every form of 
bodily degeneracy and infirmity attributed to this par- 
ticular favorite food. I see no reason or sense in it. 
Mr. Emerson believed in pie, and was almost indig- 
nant when a fellow-traveller refused the slice he of- 
fered him. " Why, Mr. -," said he, " what is pie 

made for!" If every Green Mountain boy has not 
eaten a thousand times his weight in apple, pumpkin, 
squash, and mince pie, call me a dumpling. And 
Colonel Ethan Allen was one of them, — Ethan Allen, 
who, as they used to say, could wrench off the head of 
a wrought nail with his teeth. 

If you mean to keep as well as possible, the less 
you think about your health the better. You know 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 187 

enough not to eat or drink what you have found does 
not agree with you. You ought to know enough not 
to expose yourself needlessly to draughts. If you 
take a " constitutional," walk with the wind when you 
can, and take a closed car against it if you can get 
one. Walking against the wind is one of the most 
dangerous kinds of exposure, if you are sensitive to 
cold. But except a few simple rules such as I have 
just given, let your health take care of itself so long 
as it behaves decently. If you want to be sure not 
to reach threescore and twenty, get a little box of 
homoeopathic pellets and a little book of homoeopathic 
prescriptions. I had a poor friend who fell into that 
way, and became at last a regular Hahnemaniac. He 
left a box of his little jokers, which at last came into 
my hands. The poor fellow had cultivated s}nuptoms 
as other people cultivate roses or chrysanthemums. 
What a luxury of choice his imagination presented to 
him ! When one watches for symptoms, every organ 
in the body is ready to put in its claim. By and by 
a real illness attacked him, and the box of little pel- 
lets was shut up, to minister to his fancied evils no 
longer. 

Let me tell you one thing. I think if patients and 
physicians were in the habit of recognizing the fact I 
am going to mention, both would be gainers. The 
law I refer to must be familiar to all observing physi- 
cians, and to all intelligent persons who have observed 
their own bodily and mental conditions. This is the 
curve of health. It is a mistake to suppose that the 
normal state of health is represented by a straight 
horizontal line. Independently of the well-known 
causes which raise or depress the standard of vitality, 
there seems to be, — I think I may venture to say 



188 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

there is,— a rhythmic undulation in the flow of the vital 
force. The " dynamo " which furnishes the working 
powers of consciousness and action has its annual, its 
monthly, its diurnal waves, even its momentary rip- 
ples, in the current it furnishes. There are greater 
and lesser curves in the movement of every day's life 9 
— a series of ascending and descending movements, a 
periodicity depending on the very nature of the force 
at work in the living organism. Thus we have our 
good seasons and our bad seasons, our good days and 
our bad days, life climbing and descending in long or 
short undulations, which I have called the curve of 
health. 

From this fact spring a great proportion of the 
errors of medical practice. On it are based the delu- 
sions of the various shadowy systems which impose 
themselves on the ignorant and half-learned public as 
branches or " schools " of science. A remedy taken 
at the time of the ascent in the curve of health is 
found successful. The same remedy taken while the 
curve is in its downward movement proves a failure. 

So long as this biological law exists, so long the 
charlatan will keep his hold on the ignorant public. 
So long as it exists, the wisest practitioner will be lia- 
ble to deceive himself about the effect of what he calls 
and loves to think are his remedies. Long-continued 
and sagacious observation will to some extent unde- 
ceive him ; but were it not for the happy illusion that 
his useless or even deleterious drugs were doing good 
service, many a practitioner would give up his calling 
for one in which he could be more certain that he was 
really being useful to the subjects of his professional 
dealings. For myself, I should prefer a physician of 
a sanguine temperament, who had a firm belief in him- 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 189 

self and his methods. I do not wonder at all that the 
public support a whole community of pretenders who 
show the portraits of the patients they have " cured," 
The best physicians will tell you that, though many 
patients get well under their treatment, they rarely 
cure anybody. If you are told also that the best phy- 
sician has many more patients die on his hands than 
the worst of his fellow-practitioners, you may add 
these two statements to your bundle of paradoxes, and 
if they puzzle you I will explain them at some future 
time. 

[I take this opportunity of correcting a statement 
now going the rounds of the medical and probably 
other periodicals. In " The Journal of the American 
Medical Association," dated April 26, 1890, published 
at Chicago, I am reported, in quotation marks, as 
saying, — 

" Give me opium, wine, and milk, and I will cure 
all diseases to which flesh is heir." 

In the first place, I never said I will cure, or can 
cure, or would or could cure, or had cured any disease. 
My venerated instructor, Dr. James Jackson, taught 
me never to use that expression. Curo means, I take 
care of, he used to say, and in that sense, if you mean 
nothing more, it is properly employed. So, in the 
amphitheatre of the Ecole de Medecine, I used to 
read the words of Ambroise Pare, — " Je le pansay, 
Dieu le guarist." (I dressed his wound, and God 
cured him.) Next, I am not in the habit of talking 
about " the diseases to which flesh is heir." The ex- 
pression has become rather too familiar for repetition, 
and belongs to the rhetoric of other latitudes. And, 
lastly, I have said some plain things, perhaps some 



190 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

sharp ones, about the abuse of drugs and the limited 
number of vitally important remedies, but I am not so 
ignorantly presumptuous as to make the foolish state- 
ment falsely attributed to me.] 

I paused a minute or two, and as no one spoke out, 
I put a question to the Counsellor. 

Are you quite sure that you wish to live to be three- 
score and twenty years old ? 

" Most certainly I do. Don't they say that Theo- 
phrastus lived to his hundred and seventh year, and 
did n't he complain of the shortness of life ? At eighty 
a man has had just about time to get warmly settled 
in his nest. Do you suppose he does n't enjoy the 
quiet of that resting-place? No more haggard re- 
sponsibility to keep him awake nights, — unless he 
prefers to retain his hold on offices and duties from 
which he can be excused if he chooses. No more goad- 
ing ambitions, — he knows he has done his best. No 
more jealousies, if he were weak enough to feel such 
ignoble stirrings in his more active season. An octo- 
genarian with a good record, and free from annoying 
or distressing infirmities, ought to be the happiest of 
men. Everybody treats him with deference. Every- 
body wants to help him. He is the ward of the gen- 
erations that have grown up since he was in the vigor 
of maturity. Yes, let me live to be fourscore years, 
and then I will tell you whether I should like a few 
more years or not." 

You carry the feelings of middle age, I said, in im- 
agination, over into the period of senility, and then 
reason and dream about it as if its whole mode of be- 
ing were like that of the earlier period of life. But 
how many things there are in old age which you must 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 191 

live into if you would expect to have any " realizing 
sense " of their significance ! In the first place, you 
have no coevals, or next to none. At fifty, your vessel 
is stanch, and you are on deck with the rest, in all 
weathers. At sixty, the vessel still floats, and you are 
in the cabin. At seventy, you, with a few fellow-pas- 
sengers, are on a raft. At eighty, you are on a spar 9 
to which, possibly, one, or two, or three friends of 
about your own age are still clinging. After that, 
you must expect soon to find yourself alone, if you are 
still floating, with only a life-preserver to keep your 
old white-bearded chin above the water. 

Kindness ? Yes, pitying kindness, which is a bitter 
sweet in which the amiable ingredient can hardly be 
said to predominate. How pleasant do you think it is 
to have an arm offered to you when you are walking 
on a level surface, where there h no chance to trip ? 
How agreeable do you suppose it is to have your well- 
meaning friends shout and screech at you, as if you 
were deaf as an adder, instead of only being, as you 
insist, somewhat hard of hearing ? I was a little over 
twenty years old when I wrote the lines which some 
of you may have met with, for they have been often 
reprinted : — 

The mossy marbles rest 

On the lips that he has prest 
In their bloom, 

And the names he loved to hear 

Have been carved for many a year 
On the tomb. 
The world was a garden to me then ; it is a churchyard 
now. 

" I thought you were one of those who looked upon 
eld age cheerfully, and welcomed it as a season of 
peace and contented enjoyment." 



192 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

I am one of those who so regard it. Those are not 
bitter or scalding tears that fall from my eyes upon 
" the mossy marbles." The young who left my side 
early in my life's journey are still with me in the un- 
changed freshness and beauty of youth. Those who 
have long kept company with me live on after their 
seeming departure, were it only by the mere force of 
habit ; their images are all around me, as if every sur- 
face had been a sensitive film that photographed them ; 
their voices echo about me, as if they had been re- 
corded on those unforgetting cylinders which bring 
back to us the tones and accents that have imprinted 
them, as the hardened sands show us the tracks of 
extinct animals. The melancholy of old age has a 
divine tenderness in it, which only the sad experiences 
of life can lend a human soul. But there is a lower 
level, — that of tranquil contentment and easy acqui- 
escence in the conditions in which we find ourselves ; 
a lower level, in which old age trudges patiently when 
it is not using its wings. I say its wings, for no pe- 
riod of life is so imaginative as that which looks to 
younger people the most prosaic The atmosphere of 
memory is one in which imagination flies more easily 
and feels itself more at home than in the thinner ether 
of youthful anticipation. I have told you some of the 
drawbacks of age ; I would not have you forget its 
privileges. When it comes down from its aerial ex- 
cursions, it has much left to enjoy on the humble plane 
of being. And so you think you would like to be- 
come an octogenarian ? 

" I should," said the Counsellor, now a man in the 
high noon of bodily and mental vigor. " Four more 
— yes, five more — decades would not be too much, I 
think. And how much I should live to see in that 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 193 

time ! I am glad you have laid down some rules by 
which a man may reasonably expect to leap the eight- 
barred gate. I won't promise to obey them all 
though." 

Among the questions addressed to me, as to a large 
number of other persons, are the following. I take 
them from " The American Hebrew " of April 4, 
1890. I cannot pretend to answer them all, but I can 
say something about one or two of them. 

" I. Can you, of your own personal experience, find 
any justification whatever for the entertainment of 
prejudice towards individuals solely because they are 
Jews? 

" II. Is this prejudice not due largely to the reli- 
gious instruction that is given by the church and Sun- 
day-school ? For instance, the teachings that the Jews 
crucified Jesus ; that they rejected him, and can only 
secure salvation by belief in him, and similar matters 
that are calculated to excite in the impressionable 
mind of the child an aversion, if not a loathing, for 
members of ' the despised race.' 

" III. Have you observed in the social or business 
life of the Jew, so far as your personal experience has 
gone, any different standard of conduct than prevails 
among Christians of the same social status? 

"IV. Can you suggest what should be done to dis- 
pel the existing prejudice ? " 

As to the first question, I have had very slight ac- 
quaintance with the children of Israel. I shared more 
or less the prevailing prejudices against the persecuted 
race. I used to read in my hymn-book, — I hope I 
quote correctly, — 

" See what a living stone 
The builders did refuse I 



194 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

Yet God has built his church thereon, 
In spite of envious Jews." 

I grew up inheriting the traditional idea that they 
were a race lying under a curse for their obstinacy in 
refusing the gospel. Like other children of New Eng- 
land birth, I walked in the narrow path of Puritan 
exclusiveness. The great historical church of Chris- 
tendom was presented to me as Bunyan depicted it : 
one of the two giants sitting at the door of their caves, 
with the bones of pilgrims scattered about them, and 
grinning at the travellers whom they could no longer 
devour. In the nurseries of old-fashioned Orthodoxy 
there was one religion in the world, — one religion, 
and a multitude of detestable, literally damnable im- 
positions, believed in by uncounted millions, who were 
doomed to perdition for so believing. The Jews were 
the believers in one of these false religions. It had 
been true once, but was now a pernicious and abomi- 
nable lie. The principal use of the Jews seemed to be 
to lend money, and to fulfil the predictions of the old 
prophets of their race. 

No doubt the individual sons of Abraham whom we 
found in our ill-favored and ill-flavored streets were 
apt to be unpleasing specimens of the race. It was 
against the most adverse influences of legislation, of 
religious feeling, of social repugnance, that the great 
names of Jewish origin made themselves illustrious ; 
that the philosophers, the musicians, the financiers, 
the statesmen, of the last centuries forced the world 
to recognize and accept them. Benjamin, the son of 
Isaac, a son of Israel, as his family name makes ob« 
vious, has shown how largely Jewish blood has been 
represented in the great men and women of modern 
days. 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 195 

There are two virtues which Christians have found 
it very hard to exemplify in practice. These are mod- 
esty and civility. The Founder of the Christian re- 
ligion appeared among a people accustomed to look 
for a Messiah, — a special ambassador from heaven, 
with an authoritative message. They were intimately 
acquainted with every expression having reference to 
this divine messenger. They had a religion of their 
own, about which Christianity agrees with Judaism in 
asserting that it was of divine origin. It is a serious 
fact, to which we do not give all the attention it de- 
serves, that this divinely instructed people were not 
satisfied with the evidence that the young Rabbi who 
came to overthow their ancient church and found a 
new one was a supernatural being. " We think he 
was a great Doctor," said a Jewish companion with 
whom I was conversing. He meant a great Teacher, 
I presume, though healing the sick was one of his 
special offices. Instead of remembering that they 
were entitled to form their own judgment of the new 
Teacher, as they had judged of Hillel and other great 
instructors, Christians, as they called themselves, have 
insulted, calumniated, oppressed, abased, outraged, 
"the chosen race" during the long succession of cen- 
turies since the Jewish contemporaries of the Founder 
of Christianity made up their minds that he did not 
meet the conditions required by the subject of the pre- 
dictions of their Scriptures. The course of the argu- 
ment against them is very briefly and effectively stated 
by Mr. Emerson : — 

" This was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I 
will kill you if you say he was a man." 

It seems as if there should be certain laws of eti- 
quette regulating the relation of different religions to 



196 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

each other. It is not civil for a follower of Mahomet 
to call his neighbor of another creed a " Christian 
dog." Still more, there should be something like po- 
liteness in the bearing of Christian sects toward each 
other, and of believers in the new dispensation toward 
those who still adhere to the old. We are in the habit 
of allowing a certain arrogant assumption to our Ro- 
man Catholic brethren. We have got used to their 
pretensions. They may call us " heretics," if they 
like. They may speak of us as " infidels," if they 
choose, especially if they say it in Latin. So long as 
there is no inquisition, so long as there is no auto da 
fe, we do not mind the hard words much ; and we 
have as good phrases to give them back : the Man of 
Sin and the Scarlet Woman will serve for examples. 
But it is better to be civil to each other all round. I 
doubt if a convert to the religion of Mahomet was 
ever made by calling a man a Christian dog. I doubt 
if a Hebrew ever became a good Christian if the bap- 
tismal rite was performed by spitting on his Jewish 
gabardine. I have often thought of the advance in 
comity and true charity shown in the title of my late 
honored friend James Freeman Clarke's book, " The 
Ten Great Religions." If the creeds of mankind try 
to understand each other before attempting mutual 
extermination, they will be sure to find a meaning in 
beliefs which are different from their own. The 
old Caivinistic spirit was almost savagely exclusive. 
While the author of the " Ten Great Religions " was 
growing up in Boston under the benignant, large- 
minded teachings of the Rev. James Freeman, the fa- 
mous Dr. John M. Mason, at New York, was fiercely 
attacking the noble humanity of " The Universal 
Prayer." " In preaching," says his biographer, " he 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 197 

once quoted Pope's lines as to God's being adored 
alike i by saint, by savage, and by sage,' and pro- 
nounced it (in his deepest guttural) ' the most damna- 
ble lie.' " 

What could the Hebrew expect when a Christian 
preacher could use such language about a petition 
breathing the very soul of humanity? Happily, the 
true human spirit is encroaching on that arrogant and 
narrow-minded form of selfishness which called itself 
Christianity. 

The golden rule should govern us in dealing with 
those whom we call unbelievers, with heathen, and 
with all who do not accept our religious views. The 
Jews are with us as a perpetual lesson to teach us 
modesty and civility. The religion we profess is not 
self-evident. It did not convince the people to whom 
it was sent. We have no claim to take it for granted 
that we are all right, and they are all wrong. And^ 
therefore, in the midst of all the triumphs of Christi- 
anity, it is well that the stately synagogue should lift 
its walls by the side of the aspiring cathedral, a per- 
petual reminder that there are many mansions in the 
Father's earthly house as well as in the heavenly one ; 
that civilized humanity, longer in time and broader in 
space than any historical form of belief, is mightier 
than any one institution or organization it includes. 

Many years ago I argued with myself the proposi- 
tion which my Hebrew correspondent has suggested. 
Recogniziug the fact that I was born to a birthright 
of national and social prejudices against " the chosen 
people," — chosen as the object of contumely and 
abuse by the rest of the world, — I pictured my own 
inherited feelings of aversion in all their intensity, 
and the strain of thought under the influence of which 



198 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

those prejudices gave way to a more human, a more 
truly Christian feeling of brotherhood. I must ask 
your indulgence while I quote a few verses from a 
poem of my own, printed long ago under the title " At 
the Pantomime." 

I was crowded between two children of Israel, and 
gave free inward expression to my feelings. All at 
once I happened to look more closely at one of my 
neighbors, and saw that the youth was the very ideal 
of the Son of Mary. 

A fresh young cheek whose olive hue 
The mantling blood shows faintly through; 
Locks dark as midnight, that divide 
And shade the neck on either side; 
Soft, gentle, loving eyes that gleam 
Clear as a starlit mountain stream ; 
So looked that other child of Shem, 
The Maiden's Boy of Bethlehem ! 

— And thou couldst scorn the peerless blood 
That flows unmingled from the Flood, — 
Thy scutcheon spotted with the stains 
Of Norman thieves and pirate Danes i 
The New "World's foundling, in thy pride 
Scowl on the Hebrew at thy side, 
And lo ! the very semblance there 
The Lord of Glory deigned to wear ! 

I see that radiant image rise, 
The flowing hair, the pitying eyes, 
The faintly crimsoned cheek that shows 
The blush of Sharon's opening rose, — 
Thy hands would clasp his hallowed feet 
Whose brethren soil thy Christian seat, 
Thy lips would press his garment's hem 
That curl in wrathful scorn for them I 

A sudden mist, a watery screen, 
Dropped like a veil before the scene ; 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 199 

The shadow floated from my soul, 
And to my lips a whisper stole : — 
" Thy prophets caught the Spirit's flame, 
From thee the Sou of Mary came, 
With thee the Father deigued to dwell, - - 
Peace be upon thee, Israel ! " 

It is not to be expected that intimate relations will 
be established between Jewish and Christian comniu* 
nities until both become so far rationalized and hu- 
manized that their differences are comparatively 
unimportant. But already there is an evident ap- 
proximation in the extreme left of what is called lib- 
eral Christianity and the representatives of modern 
Judaism. The life of a man like the late Sir Moses 
Montefiore reads a lesson from the Old Testament 
which might well have been inspired by the noblest 
teachings of the Christian Gospels. 

Delilah, and how she got her name. 

Est-elle bien gentille, cette petite f I said one day 
to Number Five, as our pretty Delilah put her arm 
between us with a bunch of those tender early rad- 
ishes that so recall the po$o&a.KTv\os 'Hw's, the rosy-fin- 
gered morning of Homer. The little hand which 
held the radishes would not have shamed Aurora. 
That hand has never known drudgery, I feel sure. 

When I spoke those French words our little Deli- 
lah gave a slight, seemingly involuntary start, and her 
cheeks grew of as bright a red as her radishes. Ah, 
said I to myself, does that young girl understand 
French ? It may be worth while to be careful what 
one says before her. 

There is a mystery about this girl. She seems to 
know her place perfectly, — except, perhaps, when 



200 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

she burst out crying, the other day, which was against 
all the rules of table-maiden's etiquette, — and yet she 
looks as if she had been born to be waited on, and 
not to perform that humble service for others. We 
know that once in a while girls with education and 
well connected take it into their heads to go into ser- 
vice for a few weeks or months. Sometimes it is from 
economic motives, — to procure means for their edu- 
cation, or to help members of their families who need 
assistance. At any rate, they undertake the lighter 
menial duties of some household where they are not 
known, and, having stooped — if stooping it is to be 
considered — to lowly offices, no born and bred ser- 
vants are more faithful to all their obligations. You 
must not suppose she was christened Delilah. Any 
of our ministers would hesitate to give such a heathen 
name to a Christian child. 

The way she came to get it was this : The Professor 
was going to give a lecture before an occasional audi- 
ence, one evening. When he took his seat with the 
other Teacups, the American Annex whispered to the 
other Annex, " His hair wants cutting, — it looks like 
fury." " Quite so," said the English Annex. " I 
wish you would tell him so, — I do, awfully." " I '11 
fix it," said the American girl. So, after the teacups 
were emptied and the company had left the table, she 
went up to the Professor. " You read this lecture, 
don't you, Professor ? " she said. " I do," he an- 
swered. " I should think that lock of hair which falls 
down over your forehead would trouble you," she 
said. " It does sometimes," replied the Professor. 
" Let our little maid trim it for you. You 're equal 
to that, aren't you?" turning to the handmaiden. 
" I always used to cut my father's hair," she answered 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 201 

She brought a pair of glittering shears, and before 
she would let the Professor go she had trimmed his 
hair and beard as they had not been dealt with for 
many a day. Everybody said the Professor looked 
ten years younger. After that our little handmaiden 
was always called Delilah, among the talking Teacups,, 

The Mistress keeps a watchful eye on this young 
girl. I should not be surprised to find that she was 
carrying out some ideal, some fancy or whim, — pos- 
sibly nothing more, but springing from some gener- 
ous, youthful impulse. Perhaps she is working for 
that little sister at the Blind Asylum. Where did she 
learn French ? She did certainly blush, and betrayed 
every sign of understanding the words spoken about 
her in that language. Sometimes she sings while at 
her work, and we have all been struck with the pure, 
musical character of her voice. It is just such a voice 
as ought to come from that round white throat. We 
made a discovery about it the other evening. 

The Mistress keeps a piano in her room, and we 
have sometimes had music in the evening. One of 
The Teacups, to whom I have slightly referred, is an 
accomplished pianist, and the two Annexes sing very 
sweetly together, — the American girl having a clear 
soprano voice, the English girl a mellow contralto. 
They had sung several tunes, when the Mistress rang 
for Avis, — for that is our Delilah's real name. She 
whispered to the young girl, who blushed and trem= 
bled. " Don't be frightened," said the Mistress en- 
couragingly. " I have heard you singing s Too Young 
for Love,' and I will get our pianist to play it. The 
young ladies both know it, and you must join in." 

The two voices, with the accompaniment, had hardly 
finished the first line when a pure, ringing, almost 



202 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

childlike voice joined the vocal duet. The sound of 
her own voice seemed to make her forget her fears, 
and she warbled as naturally and freely as any young 
bird of a May morning. Number Five came in while 
she was singing, and when she got through caught her 
in her arms and kissed her, as if she were her sister 9 
and not Delilah, our table-maid. Number Five is apt 
to forget herself and those social differences to which 
some of us attach so much importance. This is the 
song in which the little maid took part : — 

TOO YOUNG FOR LOVE. 

Too young for love ? 

Ah, say not so ! 
Tell reddening rose-buds not to blow ! 
Wait not for spring to pass away, — 
Love's summer months begin with May ! 

Too young for love ? 

Ah, say not so ! 

Too young ? Too young ? 

Ah, no ! no ! no ! 

Too young for love ? 

Ah, say net so, 
While daisies bloom and tulips glow ! 
June soon will come with lengthened day 
To practise all love learned in May. 

Too young for love ? 

Ah, say not so ! 

Too young ? Too young ? 

Ah, no ! no ! no ! 



IX. 



I often wish that our Number Seven could have 
known and corresponded with the author of " The 
Budget of Paradoxes." I think Mr. De Morgan would 
have found some of his vagaries and fancies not un- 
deserving of a place in his wonderful collection of ec- 
centricities, absurdities, ingenuities, — mental freaks 
of all sorts. But I think he would have now and then 
recognized a sound idea, a just comparison, a sugges- 
tive hint, a practical notion, which redeemed a page of 
extravagances and crotchety whims. I confess that I 
am often pleased with fancies of his, and should be 
willing to adopt them as my own. I think he has, in 
the midst of his erratic and tangled conceptions, some 
perfectly clear and consistent trains of thought. 

So when Number Seven spoke of sending us a paper, 
I welcomed the suggestion. I asked him whether he 
had any objection to my looking it over before he read 
it. My proposal rather pleased him, I thought, for, 
as was observed on a former occasion, he has in con- 
nection with a belief in himself another side, — a curi- 
ous self-distrust. I have no question that he has an 
obscure sense of some mental deficiency. Thus you 
may expect from him first a dogma, and presently a 
doubt. If you fight his dogma, he will do battle for 
it stoutly ; if you let him alone, he will very probably 
explain its extravagances, if it has any, and tame it 
into reasonable limits. Sometimes he is in one mood, 
sometimes in another. 



204 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

The first portion of what we listened to shows him 
at his best ; in the latter part I am afraid you will 
think he gets a little wild. 

I proceed to lay before you the paper which Num= 
ber Seven read to The Teacups. There was something 
very pleasing in the deference which was shown him 
We all feel that there is a crack in the teacup, and 
are disposed to handle it carefully. I have left out a 
few things which he said, feeling that they might give 
offence to some of the company. There were sen- 
tences so involved and obscure that I was sure they 
would not be understood, if indeed he understood them 
himself. But there are other passages so entirely 
sane, and as it seems to me so just, that if any reader 
attributes them to me I shall not think myself wronged 
by the supposition. You must remember that Num- 
ber Seven has had a fair education, that he has been 
a wide reader in many directions, and that he belongs 
to a family of remarkable intellectual gifts. So it was 
not surprising that he said some things which pleased 
the company, as in fact they did. The reader will not 
be startled to see a certain abruptness in the transition 
from one subject to another, — it is a characteristic of 
the squinting brain wherever you find it. Another 
curious mark rarely wanting in the subjects of mental 
strabismus is an irregular and often sprawling and de- 
formed handwriting. Many and many a time I have 
said, after glancing at the back of a letter, " This 
comes from an insane asylum, or from an eccentric 
who might well be a candidate for such an institu- 
tion." Number Seven's manuscript, which showed 
marks of my corrections here and there, furnished 
good examples of the chirography of persons with ill- 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 205 

mated cerebral hemispheres. But the earlier portions 
of the manuscript are of perfectly normal appearance. 
Conticuere omnes, as Virgil says. We were all 
silent as Number Seven began the reading of his 
paper. 

Number Seven reads, 

I am the seventh son of a seventh son, as I suppose 
you all know. It is commonly believed that some 
extraordinary gifts belong to the fortunate individuals 
born under these exceptional conditions. However 
this may be, a peculiar virtue was supposed to dwell 
in me from my earliest years. My touch was believed 
to have the influence formerly attributed to that of 
the kings and queens of England. You may remem- 
ber that the great Dr. Samuel Johnson, when a child, 
was carried to be touched by her Majesty Queen Anne 
for the " king's evil," as scrofula used to be called. 
Our honored friend The Dictator will tell you that 
the brother of one of his Andover schoolmates was 
taken to one of these gifted persons, who touched 
him, and hung a small bright silver coin, either a 
" fourpence ha'penny " or a " ninepence," about his 
neck, which, strange to say, after being worn a certain 
time, became tarnished, and finally black, — a proof 
of the poisonous matters which had become eliminated 
from the system and gathered upon the coin. I re- 
member that at one time I used to carry fourpence 
ha'pennies with holes bored through them, which I 
furnished to children or to their mothers, under 
pledges of secrecy, — receiving a piece of silver of 
larger dimensions in exchange. I never felt quite 
sure about any extraordinary endowment being a part 
of my inheritance in virtue of my special conditions 
of birth. A phrenologist, who examined my head 



206 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

when I was a boy, said the two sides were unlike. 
My hatter's measurement told me the same thing; 
but in looking over more than a bushel of the small 
cardboard hat-patterns which give the exact shape of 
the head, I have found this is not uncommon. The 
phrenologist made all sorts of predictions of what I 
should be and do, which proved about as near the 
truth as those recorded in Miss Edith Thomas's 
charming little poem, " Augury," which some of us 
were reading the other day. 

I have never been through college, but I had a rela- 
tive who was famous as a teacher of rhetoric in one of 
our universities, and especially for taking the non- 
sense out of sophomorical young fellows who could 
not say anything without rigging it up in showy and 
sounding phrases. I think I learned from him to ex- 
press myself in good old-fashioned English, and with- 
out making as much fuss about it as our Fourth of 
July orators and political harauguers were in the 
habit of making. 

I read a good many stories during my boyhood, one 
of which left a lasting impression upon me, and which 
I have always commended to young people. It is too 
late, generally, to try to teach old people, yet one may 
profit by it at any period of life before the sight has 
become too dim to be of any use. The story I refer 
to is in " Evenings at Home," and is called " Eyes and 
No Eyes." I ought to have it by me, but it is con- 
stantly happening that the best old things get over- 
laid by the newest trash ; and though I have never 
seen anything of the kind half so good, my table and 
shelves are cracking with the weight of involuntary 
accessions to my library. 

This is the story as I remember it : Two children 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 207 

walk out, and are questioned when they come home. 
One has found nothing to observe, nothing to admire, 
nothing to describe, nothing to ask questions about. 
The other has found everywhere objects of curiosity 
and interest. I advise you, if you are a child any- 
where under forty-five, and do not yet wear glasses, 
to send at once for " Evenings at Home " and read 
that story. For myself, I am always grateful to the 
writer of it for calling my attention to common thingSo 
How many people have been waked to a quicker con- 
sciousness of life by Wordsworth's simple lines about 
the daffodils, and what he says of the thoughts sug- 
gested to him by " the meanest flower that blows " ! 

I was driving with a friend, the other day, through 
a somewhat dreary stretch of country, where there 
seemed to be very little to attract notice or deserve 
remark. Still, the old spirit infused by " Eyes and 
No Eyes " was upon me, and I looked for something 
to fasten my thought upon, and treat as an artist 
treats a study for a picture. The first object to which 
my eyes were drawn was an old-fashioned well-sweep. 
It did not take much imaginative sensibility to be 
stirred by the sight of this most useful, most ancient, 
most picturesque, of domestic conveniences. I know 
somethiug of the shadoof of Egypt, — the same ar- 
rangement by which the sacred waters of the Nile 
have been lifted, from the days of the Pharaohs to 
those of the Khedives. That long forefinger pointing 
to heaven was a symbol which spoke to the Puritan 
exile as it spoke of old to the enslaved Israelite. Was 
there ever any such water as that which we used to 
draw from the deep, cold well, in " the old oaken 
bucket " ? What memories gather about the well in 
all ages ! What love-matches have been made at its 



208 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

margin, from the times of Jacob and Rachel down- 
ward ! What fairy legends hover over it, what fear- 
ful mysteries has it hidden ! The beautiful well- 
sweep ! It is too rarely that we see it, and as it dies 
out and gives place to the odiously convenient pump, 
with the last patent on its cast-iron uninterestingness, 
does it not seem as if the farmyard aspect had lost 
half its attraction ? So long as the dairy farm exists, 
doubtless there must be every facility for getting 
water in abundance ; but the loss of the well-sweep 
cannot be made up to us even if our milk were diluted 
to twice its present attenuation. 

The well-sweep had served its turn, and my com- 
panion and I relapsed into silence. After a while we 
passed another farmyard, with nothing which seemed 
deserving of remark except the wreck of an old 
wagon. 

" Look," I said, " if you want to see one of the 
greatest of all the triumphs of human ingenuity, — 
one of the most beautiful, as it is one of the most use- 
ful, of all the mechanisms which the intelligence of 
successive ages has called into being." 

" I see nothing," my companion answered, " but an 
old broken-down wagon. Why they leave such a 
piece of lumbering trash about their place, where peo- 
ple can see it as they pass, is more than I can account 
for." 

" And yet," said I, " there is one of the most ex- 
traordinary products of human genius and skill, — an 
object which combines the useful and the beautiful to 
an extent which hardly any simple form of mechanism 
can pretend to rival. Do you notice how, while every- 
thing else has gone to smash, that wheel remains sound 
and fit for service ? Look at it merely for its beauty. 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 209 

See the perfect circles, the outer and the inner. A 
circle is in itself a consummate wonder of geometrical 
symmetry. It is the line in which the omnipotent en- 
ergy delights to move. There is no fault iu it to be 
amended. The first drawn circle and the last both 
embody the same complete fulfillment of a perfect de- 
sign. Then look at the rays which pass from the in- 
ner to the outer circle. How beautifully they bring 
the greater and lesser circles into connection with each 
other ! The flowers know that secret, — the margue- 
rite in the meadow displays it as clearly as the great 
sun in heaven. How beautiful is this flower of wood 
and iron, which we were ready to pass by without 
wasting a look upon it ! But its beauty is only the 
beginning of its wonderful claim upon us for our 
admiration. Look at that field of flowering grass, 
the triticum vulgare, — see how its waves follow the 
breeze in satiny alternations of light and shadow. 
You admire it for its lovely aspect ; but when you re- 
member that this flowering grass is toheat, the finest 
food of the highest human races, it gains a dignity, a 
glory, that its beauty alone could not give it. 

" Now look at that exquisite structure lying neg- 
lected and disgraced, but essentially unchanged in its 
perfection, before you. That slight and delicate- 
looking fabric has stood such a trial as hardly any 
slender contrivance, excepting always the valves of 
the heart, was ever subjected to. It has rattled for 
years over the cobble-stones of a rough city pavemento 
It has climbed over all the accidental obstructions it- 
met in the highway, and dropped into all the holes 
and deep ruts that made the heavy farmer sitting over 
it use his Sunday vocabulary in a week-day form of 
speech. At one time or another, almost every part of 



210 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

that old wagon has given way. It has had two new 
pairs of shafts. Twice the axle has broken off close 
to the hub, or nave. The seat broke when Zekle and 
Huldy were having what they called ' a ride ' together. 
The front was kicked in by a vicious mare. The 
springs gave way and the floor bumped on the axle. 
Every portion of the wagon became a prey of its spe- 
cial accident, except that most fragile looking of all 
its parts, the wheel. Who can help admiring the ex- 
act distribution of the power of resistance at the least 
possible expenditure of material which is manifested 
in this wondrous triumph of human genius and skill ? 
The spokes are planted in the solid hub as strongly as 
the jaw-teeth of a lion in their deep-sunken sockets. 
Each spoke has its own territory in the circumference, 
for which it is responsible. According to the load the 
vehicle is expected to carry, they are few or many, 
stout or slender, but they share their joint labor with 
absolute justice, — not one does more, not one does 
less, than its just proportion. The outer end of the 
spokes is received into the deep mortise of the wooden 
fellies, and the structure appears to be complete. But 
how long would it take to turn that circle into a poly- 
gon, unless some mighty counteracting force should 
prevent it ? See the iron tire brought hot from the 
furnace and laid around the smoking circumference. 
Once in place, the workman cools the hot iron ; and as 
it shrinks with a force that seems like a hand-grasp of 
the Omnipotent, it clasps the fitted fragments of the 
structure, and compresses them into a single insepara- 
ble whole. 

" Was it not worth our while to stop a moment be- 
fore passing that old broken wagon, and see whether 
we could not find as much in it as Swift found in his 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 211 

' Meditations on a Broomstick ' ? I have been laughed 



■» j 



at for making so much of such a common thing as a 
wheel. Idiots ! Solomon's court fool would have 
scoffed at the thought of the young Galilean who 
dared compare the lilies of the field to his august mas= 
ter. Nil admirari is very well for a North American 
Indian and his degenerate successor, who has grown 
too grand to admire anything but himself, and takes a 
cynical pride in his stolid indifference to everything 
worth reverencing or honoring. " 

After calling my companion's attention to the 
wheel, and discoursing upon it until I thought he was 
getting sleepy, we jogged along until we came to a 
running stream. It was crossed by a stone bridge of 
a single arch. There are very few stone arches over 
the streams in New England country towns, and I 
always delighted in this one. It was built in the last 
century, amidst the doubting predictions of staring 
rustics, and stands to-day as strong as ever, and seem- 
ingly good for centuries to come. 

" See there ! " said I, — " there is another of my 
4 Eyes and No Eyes ' subjects to meditate upon. Next 
to the wheel, the arch is the noblest of those elemen- 
tary mechanical composites, corresponding to the prox- 
imate principles of chemistry. The beauty of the arch 
consists first in its curve, commonly a part of the cir- 
cle, of the perfection of which I have spoken. But 
the mind derives another distinct pleasure from the 
admirable manner in which the several parts, each dif- 
ferent from all the others, contribute to a single har- 
monious effect. It is a typical example of the piii nel 
uno. An arch cut out o£ a single stone would not be 
so beautiful as one of which each individual stone was 
shaped for its exact position . Its completion by the 



212 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

locking of the keystone is a delight to witness and to 
contemplate. And how the arch endures, when its 
lateral thrust is met by solid masses of resistance ! In 
one of the great temples of Baalbec a keystone has 
slipped, but how rare is that occurrence ! One will 
hardly find another such example among all the ruins 
of antiquity. Yes, I never get tired of arches. They 
are noble when shaped of solid marble blocks, each 
carefully beveled for its position. They are beautiful 
when constructed with the large thin tiles the Eomans 
were so fond of using. I noticed some arches built 
in this way in the wall of one of the grand houses just 
going up on the bank of the river. They were over 
the capstones of the windows, — to take off the pres- 
sure from them, no doubt, for now and then a cap- 
stone will crack under the weight of the superincum- 
bent mass. How close they fit, and how striking the 
effect of their long radiations ! " 

The company listened very well up to this point. 
When he began the strain of thoughts which follows, 
a curious look went round The Teacups. 

What a strange underground life is that which is 
led by the organisms we call trees ! These great flut- 
tering masses of leaves, stems, boughs, trunks, are not 
the real trees. They live underground, and what we 
see are nothing more nor less than their tails. 

The Mistress dropped her teaspoon. Number Five 
looked at the Doctor, whose face was very still and 
sober. The two Annexes giggled, or came very near it. 

Yes, a tree is an underground creature, with its 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 213 

tail in the air. All its intelligence is in its roots. All 
the senses it has are in its roots. Think what sagacity 
it shows in its search after food and drink ! Somehow 
or other, the rootlets, which are its tentacles, find out 
that there is a brook at a moderate distance from the 
trunk of the tree, and they make for it with all their 
might. They find every crack in the rocks where there 
are a few grains of the nourishing substance they care 
for. and insinuate themselves into its deepest recesses. 
>Vhen spring and summer come, they let their tails 
grow, and delight in whisking them about in the wind, 
or letting them be whisked about by it ; for these tails 
are poor passive things, with very little will of their 
own, and bend in whatever direction the wind chooses 
to make them. The leaves make a deal of noise whis- 
pering. I have sometimes thought I could understand 
them, as they talk with each other, and that they seemed 
to think they made the wind as they wagged forward 
and back. Eemember what I say. The next time 
you see a tree waving in the wind, recollect that it is 
the tail of a great underground, many-armed, polypus- 
like creature, which is as proud of its caudal appen- 
dage, especially in summer-time, as a peacock of his 
gorgeous expanse of plumage. 

Do you think there is anything so very odd about 
this idea ? Once get it well into your heads, and you 
will find it renders the landscape wonderfully inter- 
esting. There are as many kinds of tree-tails as there 
are of tails to dogs and other quadrupeds. Study 
them as Daddy Gilpin studied them in his " Forest 
Scenery,*' but don't forget that they are only the ap- 
pendage of the underground vegetable polypus, the 
true organism to which they belong. 



214 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

He paused at this point, and we all drew long 
breaths, wondering what was coming next. There was 
no denying it, the " cracked Teacup " was clinking a 
little false, — so it seemed to the company. Yet, after 
all, the fancy was not delirious, — the mind could fol- 
low it well enough ; let him go on. 

What do you say to this ? You have heard all sorts 
of things said in prose and verse about Niagara. Ask 
our young Doctor there what it reminds him of. Is n't 
it a giant putting his tongue out ? How can you fail 
to see the resemblance ? The continent is a great 
giant, and the northern half holds the head and shoul- 
ders. You can count the pulse of the giant wherever 
the tide runs up a creek ; but if you want to look at 
the giant's tongue, you must go to Niagara. If there 
were such a thing as a cosmic physician, I believe he 
could tell the state of the country's health, and the 
prospects of the mortality for the coming season, by 
careful inspection of the great tongue which Niagara 
is putting out for him, and has been showing to man- 
kind ever since the first flint-shapers chipped their 
arrow-heads. You don't think the idea adds to the 
sublimity and associations of the cataract? I am 
sorry for that, but I can't help the suggestion. It is 
just as manifestly a tongue put out for inspection as 
if it had Nature's own label to that effect hung over 
it. I don't know whether you can see these things as 
clearly as I do. There are some people that never 
see anything, if it is as plain as a hole in a grindstone, 
until it is pointed out to them ; and some that can't 
see it then, and won't believe there is any hole till 
they 've poked their finger through it. I 've got a 
great many things to thank God for, but perhaps most 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 215 

of all that I can find something to admire, to wonder 
at, to set my fancy going, and to wind up my enthu- 
siasm pretty much everywhere. 

Look here ! There are crowds of people whirled 
through our streets on these new-fashioned cars, with 
their witch-broomsticks overhead, — if they don't come 
from Salem, they ought to, — and not more than one 
in a dozen of these fish-eyed bipeds thinks or cares a 
nickel's worth about the miracle which is wrought for 
their convenience. They know that without hands or 
feet, without horses, without steam, so far as they can 
see, they are transported from place to place, and that 
there is nothing to account for it except the witch- 
broomstick and the iron or copper cobweb which 
they see stretched above them. What do they know 
or care about this last revelation of the omnipresent 
spirit of the material universe ? We ought to go 
down on our knees when one of these mighty caravans, 
car after car, spins by us, under the mystic impulse 
which seems to know not whether its train is loaded 
or empty. We are used to force in the muscles of 
horses, in the expansive potency of steam, but here 
we have force stripped stark naked, — nothing but a 
filament to cover its nudity, — and yet showing its 
might in efforts that would task the working-beam of 
a ponderous steam-engine. I am thankful that in an 
age of cynicism I have not lost my reverence. Per- 
haps you would wonder to see how some very common 
sights impress me. I always take off my hat if I stop 
to speak to a stone-cutter at his work. "Why?" do 
you ask me ? Because I know that his is the only la- 
bor that is likely to endure. A score of centuries has 
not effaced the marks of the Greek's or the Roman's 
chisel on his block of marble. And now, before this 



216 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

new manifestation of that form of cosmic vitality which 
we call electricity, I feel like taking the posture of 
the peasants listening to the Angelus. How near the 
mystic effluence of mechanical energy brings us to the 
divine source of all power and motion ! In the old 
mythology, the right hand of Jove held and sent forth 
the lightning. So, in the record of the Hebrew proph= 
ets, did the right hand of Jehovah cast forth and 
direct it. Was Nahum thinking of our far-off time 
when he wrote, " The chariots shall rage in the streets, 
they shall justle one against another in the broad ways : 
they shall seem like torches, they shall run like the 
lightnings " ? 

Number Seven had finished reading his paper. Two 
bright spots in his cheeks showed that he had felt a 
good deal in writing it, and the flush returned as he 
listened to his own thoughts. Poor old fellow ! The 
" cracked Teacup " of our younger wits, — not yet 
come to their full human sensibilities, — the " crank " 
of vulgar tongues, the eccentric, the seventh son of a 
seventh son, too often made the butt of thoughtless 
pleasantry, was, after all, a fellow-creature, with flesh 
and blood like the rest of us. The wild freaks of his 
fancy did not hurt us, nor did they prevent him from 
seeing many things justly, and perhaps sometimes 
more vividly and acutely than if he were as sound as 
the dullest of us. 

The teaspoons tinkled loudly all round the table, as 
he finished reading. The Mistress caught her breath. 
I was afraid she was going to sob, but she took it out 
in vigorous stirring of her tea. Will you believe that 
I saw Number Five, with a sweet, approving smile on 
her face all the time, brush her cheek with her hand- 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 217 

kerchief ? There must have been a tear stealing from 
beneath its eyelid. I hope Number Seven saw it. He 
is one of the two men at our table who most need the 
tender looks and tones of a woman. The Professor 
and I are hors de combat ; the Counsellor is busy with 
his cases and his ambitions ; the Doctor is probably in 
love with a microscope, and flirting with pathological 
specimens ; but Number Seven and the Tutor are, I 
fear, both suffering from that worst of all famines, 
heart-hunger. 

Do you remember that Number Seven said he never 
wrote a line of " poetry " in his life, except once when 
he was suffering from temporary weakness of body 
and mind ? That is because he is a poet. If he had 
not been one, he would very certainly have taken to 
tinkling rhymes. What should you think of the prob- 
able musical genius of a young man who was particu- 
larly fond of jingling a set of sleigh-bells ? Should 
you expect him to turn out a Mozart or a Beethoven ? 
Now, I think I recognize the poetical instinct in Num- 
ber Seven, however imperfect may be its expression, 
and however he may be run away with at times by 
fantastic notions that come into his head. If fate had 
allotted him a helpful companion in the shape of a 
loving and intelligent wife, he might have been half 
cured of his eccentricities, and we should not have 
had to say, in speaking of him, " Poor fellow ! " But 
since this cannot be, I am pleased that he should have 
been so kindly treated on the occasion of the reading 
of his paper. If he saw Number Five's tear, he will 
certainly fall in love with her. No matter if he does. 
Number Five is a kind of Circe who does not turn the 
victims of her enchantment into swine, but into lambs. 
I want to see Number Seven one of her little flock. I 



218 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

say " little." I suspect it is larger than most of us 
know. Anyhow, she can spare him sympathy and 
kindness and encouragement enough to keep him con- 
tented with himself and with her, and never miss the 
pulses of her loving life she lends him. It seems to 
be the errand of some women to give many people 
as much happiness as they have any right to in this 
world. If they concentrated their affection on one, 
they would give him more than any mortal could claim 
as his share. I saw Number Five watering her flow- 
ers, the other day. The watering-pot had one of those 
perforated heads, through which the water runs in 
many small streams. Every plant got its share : the 
proudest lily bent beneath the gentle shower ; the 
lowliest daisy held its little face up for baptism. All 
were refreshed, none was flooded. Presently she 
took the perforated head, or " rose," from the neck of 
the watering-pot, and the full stream poured out in a 
round, solid column. It was almost too much for the 
poor geranium on which it fell, and it looked at one 
minute as if the roots would be laid bare, and perhaps 
the whole plant be washed out of the soil in which it 
was planted. What if Number Five should take off 
the " rose " that sprinkles her affections on so many, 
and pour them all on one ? Can that ever be ? If it 
can, life is worth living for him on whom her love may 
be lavished. 

One of my neighbors, a thorough American, is 
much concerned about the growth of what he calls the 
" hard-handed aristocracy." He tells the following 
story : — 

" I was putting up a fence about my yard, and em- 
ployed a man of whom I knew something, — that he 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 219 

was industrious, temperate, and that he had a wife 
and children to support, — a worthy man, a native 
New Englander. I engaged him, I say, to dig some 
post-holes. My employee bought a new spade and 
scoop on purpose, and came to my place at the ap- 
pointed time, and began digging. While he was at 
work, two men came over from a drinking-saloon, to 
which my residence is nearer than I could desire. 
One of them I had known as Mike Fagan, the other 
as Hans Schleimer. They looked at Hiram, my New 
Hampshire man, in a contemptuous and threatening 
way for a minute or so, when Pagan addressed him : — ■ 

" ' And how much does the man pay yez by the 
hour ? ' 

" ' The gentleman does n't pay me by the hour,' 
said Hiram. 

" ' How mosh does he bay you by der veeks ? ' said 
Hans. 

" ' I don' know as that 's any of your business,' an- 
swered Hiram. 

" i Faith, we '11 make it our business,' said Mike 
Fagan. ' We 're Knoights of Labor, we 'd have yez 
to know, and ye can't make yer bargains jist as ye 
loikes. We manes to know how mony hours ye 
worrks, and how much ye gets for it.' 

"'Knights of Labor!' said I. 'Why, that is a 
kind of title of nobility, is n't it ? I thought the laws 
of our country did n't allow titles of that kind. But 
if you have a right to be called knights, I suppose I 
ought to address you as such. Sir Michael, I con= 
gratulate you on the dignity you have attained. I 
hope Lady Fagan is getting on well with my shirts. 
Sir Hans, 1 pay my respects to your title. I trust 
that Lady Schleimer has got through that little diffi- 



220 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

culty between her ladyship and yourself in which the 
police court thought it necessary to intervene.' 

" The two men looked at me. I weigh about a hun- 
dred and eighty pounds, and am well put together. 
Hiram was noted in his village as a i rahstler.' But 
my face is rather pallid and peaked, and Hiram had 
something of the greenhorn look. The two men, who 
had been drinking, hardly knew what ground to take. 
They rather liked the sound of Sir Michael and Sir 
Hans. They did not know very well what to make of 
their wives as ' ladies.' They looked doubtful whether 
to take what had been said as a casus belli or not, but 
they wanted a pretext of some kind or other. Pres- 
ently one of them saw a label on the scoop, or long- 
handled, spoon-like shovel, with which Hiram had 
been working. 

" ' Arrah, be jabers ! ' exclaimed Mike Fagan, ' but 
has n't he been a-tradin' wid Brown, the hardware fel- 
lah, that we boycotted ! Grab it, Hans, and we '11 
carry it off and show it to the brotherhood.' 

" The men made a move toward the implement. 

" ' You let that are scoop-shovel alone,' said Hiram. 

" I stepped to his side. The Knights were com- 
bative, as their noble predecessors with the same title 
always were, and it was necessary to come to a voie 
de fait. My straight blow from the shoulder did for 
Sir Michael. Hiram treated Sir Hans to what is 
technically known as a cross-buttock. 

" ' Naow, Dutchman,' said Hiram, i if you don't 
want to be planted in that are post-hole, y 'd better 
take y'rself out o' this here piece of private property. 
" Dangerous passin'," as the sign-posts say, abaout 
these times.' 

" Sir Michael went down half stunned by my ex- 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 221 

pressive gesture ; Sir Hans did not know whether his 
hip was out of joint or he had got a bad sprain ; but 
they were both out of condition for further hostilities. 
Perhaps it was hardly fair to take advantage of their 
misfortunes to inflict a discourse upon them, but they 
had brought it on themselves, and we each of us gave 
them a piece of our mind. 

" ' I tell you what it is,' said Hiram, 4 1 'm a free 
and independent American citizen, and I an't a-gon' 
to hev no man tyrannize over me, if he doos call him- 
self by one o' them noblemen's titles. Ef I can't 
work jes' as I choose, fur folks that wants me to work 
fur 'em and that I want to work fur, I might jes' as 
well go to Sibery and done with it. My gran'f'ther 
fit in Bunker Hill battle. I guess if our folks in them 
days did n't care no great abaout Lord Percy and Sir 
"William Haowe, we an't a-gon' to be scart by Sir 
Michael Fagan and Sir Hans What 's-his-name, nor 
no other fellahs that undertakes to be noblemen, and 
tells us common folks what we shall dew an' what we 
sha'n't. No, sir! ' 

" I took the opportunity to explain to Sir Michael 
and Sir Hans what it was our fathers fought for, and 
what is the meaning of liberty. If these noblemen 
did not like the country, they could go elsewhere. If 
they did n't like the laws, they had the ballot-box, and 
could choose new legislators. But as long as the laws 
existed they must obey them. I could not admit that, 
because they called themselves by the titles the Old 
World nobility thought so much of, they had a right 
to interfere in the agreements I entered into with my 
neighbor. I told Sir Michael that if he would go 
home and help Lady Fagan to saw and split the wood 
for her fire, he would be better employed than in med- 



222 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

dling with rny domestic arrangements. I advised Sir 
Hans to ask Lady Schleimer for her bottle of spirits 
to use as an embrocation for his lame hip. And so 
my two visitors with the aristocratic titles staggered 
off, and left us plain, untitled citizens, Hiram and my- 
self, to set our posts, and consider the question whether 
we lived in a free country or under the authority of a 
self -constituted order of quasi-nobility" 

It is a very curious fact that, with all our boasted 
" free and equal " superiority over the communities of 
the Old World, our people have the most enormous 
appetite for Old World titles of distinction. Sir Mi- 
chael and Sir Hans belong to one of the most extended 
of the aristocratic orders. But we have also " Knights 
and Ladies of Honor," and, what is still grander, 
" Royal Conclave of Knights and Ladies," " Royal 
Arcanum," and " Royal Society of Good Fellows," 
"Supreme Council," "Imperial Court," " Grand Pro- 
tector," and " Grand Dictator," and so on. Nothing 
less than " Grand " and " Supreme " is good enough 
for the dignitaries of our associations of citizens. 
Where does all this ambition for names witnout reali- 
ties come from ? Because a Knight of the Garter 
wears a golden star, why does the worthy cordwainer, 
who mends the shoes of his fellow-citizens, want to 
wear a tin star, and take a name that had a meaning 
as used by the representatives of ancient families, or 
the men who had made themselves illustrious by their 
achievements ? 

It appears to be a peculiarly American weakness. 
The French republicans of the earlier period thought 
the term citizen was good enough for anybody. At a 
later period, " le Roi Citoyen " — the citizen king — 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 223 

was a common title given to Louis Philippe. But 
nothing; is too grand for the American, in the wav of 
titles. The proudest of them all signify absolutely 
nothing. They do not stand for ability, for public 
service, for social importance, for large possessions \ 
but, on the contrary, are oftenest found in connection 
with personalities to which they are supremely inap- 
plicable. We can hardly afford to quarrel with a 
national habit which, if lightly handled, may involve 
us in serious domestic difficulties. The " Right Wor- 
shipful " functionary whose equipage stops at my back 
gate, and whose services are indispensable to the 
health and comfort of my household, is a dignitary 
whom I must not offend. I must speak with propel 
deference to the lady who is scrubbing my floors, 
when I remember that her husband, who saws my 
wood, carries a string of high-sounding titles which 
would satisfy a Spanish nobleman. 

After all, every people must have its own forms of 
ostentation, pretence, and vulgarity. The ancient 
Romans had theirs, the English and the French have 
theirs as well, — why should not we Americans have 
ours ? Educated and refined persons must recognize 
frequent internal conflicts between the " Homo sum " 
of Terence and the " Odi prof anion vulgus " of Horace. 
The nobler sentiment should be that of every true 
American, and it is in that direction that our best 
civilization is constantly tending. 

We were waited on by a new girl, the other even= 
ing. Our pretty maiden had left us for a visit to 
some relative, — so the Mistress said. I do sincerely 
hope she will soon come back, for we all like to see 
her flitting round the table. 



224 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

I don't know what to make of it. I had it all laid 
out in my mind. With such a company there must 
be a love-story. Perhaps there will be, but there may 
be new combinations of the elements which are to 
make it up, and here is a bud among the full-blown 
flowers to which I must devote a little space. 

Delilah. 

I must call her by the name we gave her after she 
had trimmed the Samson locks of our Professor. De- 
lilah is a puzzle to most of us. A pretty creature, — 
dangerously pretty to be in a station not guarded by 
all the protective arrangements which surround the 
maidens of a higher social order. It takes a strong 
cage to keep in a tiger or a grizzly bear, but what iron 
bars, what barbed wires, can keep out the smooth and 
subtle enemy that finds out the cage where beauty is 
imprisoned ? Our young Doctor is evidently attracted 
by the charming maiden who serves him and us so 
modestly and so gracefully. Fortunately, the Mistress 
never loses sight of her. If she were her own daugh- 
ter, she could not be more watchful of all her move- 
ments. And yet I do not believe that Delilah needs 
all this overlooking. If I am not mistaken, she 
knows how to take care of herself, and could be 
trusted anywhere, in any company, without a duenna. 
She has a history, — I feel sure of it. She has been 
trained and taught as young persons of higher position 
in life are brought up, and does not belong in the 
humble station in which we find her. But inasmuch 
as the Mistress says nothing about her antecedents, 
we do not like to be too inquisitive. The two An- 
nexes are, it is plain, very curious about her. I can- 
not wonder. They are both good-looking girls, but 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 225 

Delilah is prettier than either of them. My sight is 
not so good as it was, but I can see the way in which 
the eyes of the young people follow each other about 
plainly enough to set me thinking as to what is going 
on in the thinking marrow behind them. The young 
Doctor's follow Delilah as she glides round the table, 
— they look into hers whenever they get a chance ; 
but the girl's never betray any consciousness of it, so 
far as I can see. There is no mistaking the interest 
with which the two Annexes watch all this. Why 
should n't they, I should like to know ? The Doctor 
is a bright young fellow, and wants nothing but a 
bald spot and a wife to find himself in a comfortable 
family practice. One of the Annexes, as I have said, 
has had thoughts of becoming a doctress. I don't 
think the Doctor would want his wife to practise 
medicine, for reasons which I will not stop to mention. 
Such a partnership sometimes works wonderfully 
well, as in one well-known instance where husband 
and wife are both eminent in the profession ; but our 
young Doctor has said to me that he had rather see 
his wife, — if he ever should have one, — at the piano 
than at the dissecting-table. Of course the Annexes 
know nothing about this, and they may think, as he 
professed himself willing to lecture on medicine to 
women, he might like to take one of his pupils as a 
helpmeet. 

If it were not for our Delilah's humble position, I 
don't see why she would not be a good match for any 
young man. But then it is so hard to take a young 
woman from so very lowly a condition as that of a 
" waitress " that it would require a deal of courage to 
venture on such a step. If we could only find out 
that she is a princess in disguise, so to speak, — that 



226 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

is, a young person of presentable connections as well 
as pleasing looks and manners ; that she has had an 
education of some kind, as we suspected when she 
blushed on hearing herself spoken of as a " g entitle 
petite" why, then everything would be all right, the 
young Doctor would have plain sailing, — that is, if 
he is in love with her, and if she fancies him, — and I 
should find my love-story, — the one I expected, but 
not between the parties I had thought would be mat- 
ing with each other. 

Dear little Delilah ! Lily of the valley, growing in 
the shade now, — perhaps better there until her petals 
drop ; and yet if she is all I often fancy she is, how 
her youthful presence would illuminate and sweeten a 
household ! There is not one of us who does not feel 
interested in her, — not one of us who would not be 
delighted at some Cinderella transformation which 
would show her in the setting Nature meant for her 
favorite. 

The fancy of Number Seven about the witches' 
broomsticks suggested to one of us the following 
poem : — 

THE BROOMSTICK TRAIN; OR, THE RETURN OF 
THE WITCHES. 

Look out ! Look out, boys ! Clear the track ! 
The witches are here ! They 've all come back \ 
They hanged them high, — No use ! No use ! 
What cares a witch for a hangman's noose ? 
They buried them deep, but they would n't lie still. 
For cats and witches are hard to kill ; 
They swore they should n't and would n't die, — 
Books said they did, but they lie ! they lie ! 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 227 

— A couple of hundred years, or so, 

They had knocked about in the world below, 

When an Essex Deacon dropped in to call, 

And a homesick feeling seized them all ; 

For he came from a place they knew full well, 

And many a tale he had to tell. 

They long to visit the haunts of men, 

To see the old dwellings they knew again, 

And ride on their broomsticks all around 

Their wide domain of unhallowed ground. 

In Essex county there 's many a roof 
Well known to him of the cloven hoof ; 
The small square windows are full in view 
Which the midnight hags went sailing through, 
On their well-trained broomsticks mounted high. 
Seen like shadows against the sky ; 
Crossing the track of owls and bats, 
Hugging before them their coal-black cats. 

Well did they know, those gray old wives, 

The sights we see in our daily drives : 

Shimmer of lake and shine of sea, 

Brown's bare hill with its lonely tree, 

(It was n't then as we see it now, 

With one scant scalp-lock to shade its brow;) 

Dusky nooks in the Essex woods, 

Dark, dim, Dante-like solitudes, 

T\ here the tree-toad watches the sinuous snake 

Glide through his forests of fern and brake ; 

Ipswich River ; its old stone bridge ; 

Far off Andover's Indian Ridge, 

And many a scene where history tells 

Some shadow of bygone terror dwells, — 

Of " Norman's Woe " with its tale of dread, 

Of the Screeching Woman of Marblehead, 

(The fearful story that turns men pale : 

Don't bid me tell it, — my speech would fail.) 

Who would not, will not, if he can, 
Bathe in the breezes of fair Cape Ann, — 



228 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

Rest in the bowers her bays enfold, 
Loved by the sachems and squaws of old ? 
Home where the white magnolias bloom, 
Sweet with the bayberry's chaste perfume, 
Hugged by the woods and kissed by the sea S 
Where is the Eden like to thee ? 

For that " couple of hundred years, or so," 
There had been no peace in the world below ; 
The witches still grumbling, " It is n't fair ; 
Come, give us a taste of the upper air ! 
We 've had enough of your sulphur springs, 
And the evil odor that round them clings ; 
We long for a drink that is cool and nice, — 
Great buckets of water with Wenham ice ; 
We 've served you well up-stairs, you know ; 
You 're a good old — fellow — come, let us go ! " 

I don't feel sure of his being good, 

Bnt he happened to be in a pleasant mood, — 

As fiends with their skins full sometimes are, — 

(He 'd been drinking with " roughs " at a Boston bar.) 

So what does he do but up and shout 

To a gray beard turnkey, " Let 'em out ! " 

To mind his orders was all he knew ; 

The gates swung open, and out they flew. 

" Where are our broomsticks ? " the beldams cried. 

" Here are your broomsticks," an imp replied. 

" They 've been in — the place you know — so long 

They smell of brimstone uncommon strong ; 

But they 've gained by being left alone, — 

Just look, and you '11 see how tall they 've grown." 

— " And where is my cat ? " a vixen squalled. 

"Yes, where are our cats ? " the witches bawled, 

And began to call them all by name : 

As fast as they called the cats, they came : 

There was bob-tailed Tommy and long-tailed Tim, 

And wall-eyed Jacky and green-eyed Jim, 

And splay-foot Benny and slim-legged Beau, 

And Skinny and Squally, and Jerry and Joe, 



OVEK THE TEACUPS. 229 

And many another that came at call, — 

It would take too long to count them all. 

All black, — one could hardly tell which was which, 

But every cat knew his own old witch ; 

And she knew hers as hers knew her, — 

Ah, did n't they curl their tails and purr ! 

No sooner the withered hags were free 

Than out they swarmed for a midnight spree ; 

I could n't tell all they did in rhymes, 

But the Essex people had dreadful times. 

The Swampscott fishermen still relate 

How a strange sea-monster stole thair bait ; 

How their nets were tangled in loops and knots, 

And they found dead crabs in their lobster-pots. 

Poor Danvers grieved for her blasted crops, 

And Wilmington mourned over mildewed hops. 

A blight played havoc with Beverly beans, — 

It was all the work of those hateful queans ! 

A dreadful panic began at " Pride's," 

Where the witches stopped in their midnight rides. 

And there rose strange rumors and vague alarms 

'Mid the peaceful dwellers at Beverly Farms. 

Now when the Boss of the Beldams found 

That without his leave they were ramping round, 

He called, — they could hear him twenty miles, 

From Chelsea beach to the Misery Isles ; 

The deafest old granny knew his tone 

Without the trick of the telephone. 

" Come here, you witches ! Come here ! " says he, ■= 

" At your games of old, without asking me ! 

I '11 give you a little job to do 

That will keep you stirring, you godless crew I " 

They came, of course, at their master's call, 
The witches, the broomsticks, the cats, and all ; 
He led the hags to a railway train 
The horses were trying to drag in vain. 
"Now, then," says he, "you 've had your fun, 
And here are the cars you 've got to run. 



230 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

The driver may just unhitch his team, 
We don't want horses, we don't want steam 5 
You may keep your old black cats to hug, 
But the loaded train you 've got to lug." 

Since then on many a car you '11 see 

A broomstick plain as plain can be ; 

On every stick there 's a witch astride, — 

The string you see to her leg is tied. 

She will do a mischief if she can, 

But the string is held by a careful man, 

And whenever the evil-minded witch 

Would cut come caper, he gives a twitch. 

As for the hag, you can't see her, 

But hark ! you can hear her black cat's purr, 

And now and then, as a car goes by, 

You may catch a gleam from her wicked eye. 

Often you 've looked on a rushing train, 
But just what moved it was not so plain. 
It could n't be those wires above, 
For they could neither pull nor shove ; 
Where was the motor that made it go 
You could n't guess, but now you know. 

Remember my rhymes when you ride again 
On the rattling rail by the broomstick train I 



X. 



In my last report of our talks over the teacups I 
had something to say of the fondness of our people 
for titles. Where did the anti-republican, anti-demo- 
cratic passion for swelling names come from, and how 
lono- has it been naturalized anions us ? 

A striking instance of it occurred at about the end 
of the last century. It was at that time there ap- 
peared among us one of the most original and singu- 
lar personages to whom America has given birth. 
Many of our company, — many of my readers, — aie 
well acquainted with his name, and not wholly igno- 
rant of his history. They will not object to my giv- 
ing some particulars relating to him, which, if not new 
to them, will be new to others into whose hands these 
pages may fall. 

Timothy Dexter, the first claimant of a title of 
nobility among the people of the United States of 
America, was born in the town of Maiden, near Bos- 
ton. He served an apprenticeship as a leather-dresser, 
saved some money, got some more with his wife, be- 
gan trading and speculating, and became at last rich, 
for those days. His most famous business enterprise 
was that of sending an invoice of warming-pans to the 
^Yest Indies. A few tons of ice would have seemed 
to promise a better return ; but in point of fact, he 
tells us, the warming-pans were found useful in the 



232 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

manufacture of sugar, and brought him in a handsome 
profit. His ambition rose with his fortune. He pur- 
chased a large and stately house in Newburyport, and 
proceeded to embellish and furnish it according to the 
dictates of his taste and fancy. In the grounds about 
his house, he caused to be erected between forty and 
fifty wooden statues of great men and allegorical fig« 
ures, together with four lions and one lamb. Among 
these images were two statues of Dexter himself, one 
of which held a label with a characteristic inscription. 
His house was ornamented with minarets, adorned 
with golden balls, and surmounted by a large gilt 
eagle. He equipped it with costly furniture, with 
paintings, and a library. He went so far as to pro- 
cure the services of a poet laureate, whose business it 
seems to have been to sing his praises. Surrounded 
with splendors like these, the plain title of " Mr." 
Dexter would have been infinitely too mean and com- 
mon. He therefore boldly took the step of self-en- 
nobling, and gave himself forth — as he said, obeying 
" the voice of the people at large " — as " Lord Tim- 
othy Dexter," by which appellation he has ever since 
been known to the American public. 

If to be the pioneer in the introduction of Old 
World titles into republican America can confer a 
claim to be remembered by posterity, Lord Timo- 
thy Dexter has a right to historic immortality. If 
the true American spirit shows itself most clearly 
in boundless self-assertion, Timothy Dexter is the 
great original American egotist. If to throw off 
the shackles of Old World pedantry, and defy the 
paltry rules and examples of grammarians and rheto- 
ricians, is the special province and the chartered priv- 
ilege of the American writer, Timothy Dexter is the 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 233 

founder of a new school, which tramples under foot the 
conventionalities that hampered and subjugated the 
faculties of the poets, the dramatists, the historians, 
essayists, story-tellers, orators, of the worn-out races 
which have preceded the great American people. 

The material traces of the first American noble 
man's existence have nearly disappeared. The house 
is still standing, but the statues, the minarets, the 
arches, and the memory of the great Lord Timothy 
Dexter live chiefly in tradition, and in the work which 
he bequeathed to posterity, and of which I shall say a 
few words. It is unquestionably a thoroughly original 
production, "and I fear that some readers may thiDk I 
am trifling with them when I am quoting it literally. 
I am going to make a strong claim for Lord Timothy 
as against other candidates for a certain elevated 
position. 

Thomas Jefferson is commonly recognized as the 
first to proclaim before the world the political inde- 
pendence of America. It is not so generally agreed 
upon as to who was the first to announce the literary 
emancipation of our country. 

One of Mr. Emerson's biographers has claimed 
that his Phi Beta Kappa Oration was our Declaration 
of Literary Independence. But Mr. Emerson did 
not cut himself loose from all the traditions of Old 
World scholarship. He spelled his words correctly, 
he constructed his sentences grammatically. He ad= 
hered to the slavish rules of propriety, and observed 
the reticences which a traditional delicacy has con- 
sidered inviolable in decent society, European and 
Oriental alike. When he wrote poetry, he commonly 
selected subjects which seemed adapted to poetical 



234 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

treatment, — apparently thinking that all things were 
not equally calculated to inspire the true poet's genius. 
Once, indeed, he ventured to refer to " the meal in the 
firkin, the milk in the pan," but he chiefly restricted 
himself to subjects such as a fastidious convention- 
alism would approve as having a certain fitness for 
poetical treatment. He was not always so careful as 
he might have been in the rhythm and rhyme of his 
verse, but in the main he recognized the old estab- 
lished laws which have been accepted as regulating 
both. In short, with all his originality, he worked in 
Old World harness, and cannot be considered as the 
creator of a truly American, self -governed, self-cen- 
tred, absolutely independent style of thinking and 
writing, knowing no law but its own sovereign will 
and pleasure* 

A stronger claim might be urged for Mr. Whitman. 
He takes into his hospitable vocabulary words which 
no English dictionary recognizes as belonging to the 
language, — words which will be looked for in vain 
outside of his own pages. He accepts as poetical sub- 
jects all things alike, common and unclean, without 
discrimination, miscellaneous as the contents of the 
great sheet which Peter saw let down from heaven. 
He carries the principle of republicanism through the 
whole world of created objects. He will " thread a 
thread through [his] poems," he tells us, " that no 
one thing in the universe is inferior to another thing." 
No man has ever asserted the surpassing dignity and 
importance of the American citizen so boldly and 
freely as Mr. Whitman. He calls himself " teacher 
of the unquenchable creed, namely, egotism." He 
begins one of his chants, " I celebrate myself," but he 
takes us all in as partners in his self-glorification. He 
believes in America as the new Eden. 



OVEE THE TEACUPS. 235 

" A world primal again, — vistas of glory incessant and branch- 
ing* 
A new race dominating previous ones and grander far, 
New politics — new literature and religions — new inventions 
and arts." 

Of the new literature he himself has furnished 
specimens which certainly have all the originality he 
can claim for them. So far as egotism is concerned, 
he was clearly anticipated by the titled personage to 
whom I have referred, who says of himself, " I am the 
first in the East, the first in the West, and the great- 
est philosopher in the Western world." But while 
Mr. Whitman divests himself of a part of his bap- 
tismal name, the distinguished New Englander thus 
announces his proud position : " Ime the first Lord in 
the younited States of A mercary Now of Newbury- 
port. it is the voice of the peopel and I cant Help it." 
This extract is from his famous little book called " A 
Pickle for the Knowing Ones." As an inventor of 
a new American style he goes far beyond Mr. Whit- 
man, who, to be sure, cares little for the dictionary, 
and makes his own rules of rhythm, so far as there is 
any rhythm in his sentences. But Lord Timothy 
spells to suit himself, and in place of employing punc- 
tuation as it is commonly used, prints a separate page 
ot periods, colons, semicolons, commas, notes of inter- 
rogation and of admiration, with which the reader is 
requested to " peper and soolt " the book as he pleases, 

I am afraid that Mr. Emerson and Mr. Whitman 
must yield the claim of declaring American literary 
independence to Lord Timothy Dexter, who not only 
taught his countrymen that they need not go to the 
Heralds' College to authenticate their titles of nobil- 
ity, but also that they were at perfect liberty to spell 



236 OVEK THE TEACUPS. 

just as they liked, and to write without troubling them- 
selves about stops of any kind. In writing what I 
suppose he intended for poetry, he did not even take 
the pains to break up his lines into lengths to make 
them look like verse, as may be seen by the following 
specimen : — 

WONDER OF WONDERS ! 

How great the soul is ! Do not you all wonder and admire 
to see and behold and hear ? Can you all believe half the truth, 
and admire to hear the wonders how great the soul is — only 
behold — past finding out ! Only see how large the soul is ! 
that if a man is drowned in the sea what a great bubble comes 
up out of the top of the water. . . . The bubble is the soul. 

I confess that I am not in sympathy with some of 
the movements that accompany the manifestations of 
American social and literary independence. I do not 
like the assumption of titles of Lords and Knights by 
plain citizens of a country which prides itself on rec- 
ognizing simple manhood and womanhood as suffi- 
ciently entitled to respect without these unnecessary 
additions. I do not like any better the familiar, and 
as it seems to me rude, way of speaking of our fellow- 
citizens who are entitled to the common courtesies of 
civilized society. I never thought it dignified or even 
proper for a President of the United States to call 
himself, or to be called by others, " Frank " Pierce. 
In the first place I had to look in a biographical dic- 
tionary to find out whether his baptismal name was 
Franklin, or Francis, or simply Frank, for I think 
children are sometimes christened with this abbrevi- 
ated name. But it is too much in the style of Cow- 
per's unpleasant acquaintance : — 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 237 

" The man who hails you Tom or Jack, 
And proves by thumping on your back 
How he esteems your merit." 

I should not like to hear our past chief magistrates 
spoken of as Jack Adams or Jim Madison, and it would 
have been only as a political partisan that I should 
have reconciled myself to " Tom " Jefferson. So, in 
spite of " Ben " Jonson, " Tom " Moore, and "Jack" 
Sheppard, I prefer to speak of a fellow-citizen already 
venerable by his years, entitled to respect by useful 
services to his country, and recognized by many as the 
prophet of a new poetical dispensation, with the cus- 
tomary title of adults rather than by the free and easy 
school-boy abbreviation with which he introduced him- 
self many years ago to the public. As for his rhap- 
sodies, Number Seven, our " cracked Teacup, " says 
they sound to him like " fugues played on a big organ 
which has been struck by lightning." So far as con- 
cerns literary independence, if we understand by that 
term the getting rid of our subjection to British crit- 
icism, such as it was in the days when the question 
was asked, " Who reads an American book ? " we 
may consider it pretty well established. If it means 
dispensing with punctuation, coining words at will, 
self-revelation unrestrained by a sense of what is deco- 
rous, declamations in which everything is glorified 
without being idealized, " poetry " in which the reader 
must make the rhythms which the poet has not made 
for him, then I think we had better continue literary 
colonists. I shrink from a lawless independence to 
which all the virile energy and trampling audacity of 
Mr. Whitman fail to reconcile me. But there is room 
for everybody and everything in our huge hemisphere. 
Young America is like a three-year-old colt with his 



238 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

saddle and bridle just taken off. The first thing he 
wants to do is to roll. He is a droll object, sprawling 
in the grass with his four hoofs in the air ; but he 
likes it, and it won't harm us. So let him roll, — let 
him roll ! 

Of all The Teacups around our table, Number Five 
is the one who is the object of the greatest interest. 
Everybody wauts to be her friend, and she has room 
enough in her hospitable nature to find a place for 
every one who is worthy of the privilege. The diffi- 
culty is that it is so hard to be her friend without be- 
coming her lover. I have said before that she turns 
the subjects of her Circe-like enchantment, not into 
swine, but into lambs. The Professor and I move 
round among her lambs, the docile and amiable flock 
that come and go at her bidding, that follow her foot- 
steps, and are content to live in the sunshine of her 
smile and within reach of the music of her voice. I 
like to get her away from their amiable bleatings ; I 
love to talk with her about life, of which she has seen 
a great deal, for she knows what it is to be an idol in 
society and the centre of her social circle. It might 
be a question whether women or men most admire and 
love her. With her own sex she is always heljjful, 
sympathizing, tender, charitable, sharing their griefs 
as well as taking part in their pleasures. With men 
it has seemed to make little difference whether they 
were young or old : all have found her the same sweet, 
generous, unaffected companion ; fresh enough in feel- 
ing for the youngest, deep enough in the wisdom of 
the heart for the oldest. She does not pretend to be 
youthful, nor does she trouble herself that she has seen 
the roses of more Junes than many of the younger 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 239 

women who gather round her. She has not had to 

say, 

Commeje regrette 
Man bras si dodu, 

for her arm has never lost its roundness, and her face 
is one of those that cannot be cheated of their charm 
even if they live long enough to look upon the grown 
up grandchildren of their coevals. 

It is a wonder how Number Five can find the time 
to be so much to so many friends of both sexes, in 
spite of the fact that she is one of the most insatiable 
of readers. She not only reads, but she remembers ; 
she not only remembers, but she records, for her own 
use and pleasure, and for the delight and profit of 
those who are privileged to look over her note-books. 
Number Five, as I think I have said before, has not 
the ambition to figure as an authoress. That she 
could write most agreeably is certain. I have seen 
letters of hers to friends which prove that clearly 
enough. Whether she would find prose or verse the 
most natural mode of expression I cannot say, but I 
know she is passionately fond of poetry, and I should 
not be surprised if, laid away among the pressed pan- 
sies and roses of past summers, there were poems, — 
songs, perhaps, of her own, which she sings to herself 
with her fingers touching the piano ; for to that she 
tells her secrets in tones sweet as the ring-dove's call 
to her mate. 

I am afraid it may be suggested that I am drawing 
Number Five's portrait too nearly after some model 
who is unconsciously sitting for it ; but have n't I told 
you that you must not look for flesh and blood per- 
sonalities behind or beneath my Teacups ? I am not 
going to make these so lifelike that you will be saying, 






240 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

This is Mr., or Miss, or Mrs. So-and-So. My readers 
must remember that there are very many pretty, sweet, 
amiable girls and women sitting at their pianos, and 
finding chords to the music of their heart-strings. If 
I have pictured Number Five as one of her lambs 
might do it, I have succeeded in what I wanted to ac- 
complish. Why don't I describe her person ? If I 
do, some gossip or other will be sure to say, " Oh, he 
means her, of course," and find a name to match the 
pronoun. 

It is strange to see how we are all coming to depend 
upon the friendly aid of Number Five in our various 
perplexities. The Counsellor asked her opinion in 
one of those cases where a divorce was too probable, 
but a reconciliation was possible. It takes a woman 
to sound a woman's heart, and she found there was 
still love enough under the ruffled waters to warrant 
the hope of peace and tranquillity. The young Doctor 
went to her for counsel in the case of a hysteric girl 
possessed with the idea that she was a born poetess, 
and covering whole pages of foolscap with senseless 
outbursts, which she wrote in paroxysms of wild ex- 
citement, and read with a rapture of self -admiration 
which there was nothing in her verses to justify or 
account for. How sweetly Number Five dealt with 
that poor deluded sister in her talk with the Doctor ! 
"Yes," she said to him, "nothing can be fuller of 
vanity, self-worship, and self-deception. But we must 
be very gentle with her. I knew a young girl tor- 
mented with aspirations, and possessed by a belief 
that she was meant for a higher place than that which 
fate had assigned her, who needed wholesome advice, 
just as this poor young thing does. She did not ask 
for it, and it was not offered, Alas, alas ! i no man 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 241 

cared for her soul,' — no man nor woman either. She 
was in her early teens, and the thought of her earthly 
future, as it stretched out before her, was more than 
she could bear, and she sought the presence of her 
Maker to ask the meaning of her abortive existence. 
— ^Ye will talk it over. I will help you take care of 
this child." 

The Doctor was thankful to have her assistance in 
a case with which he would have found it difficult to 
deal if he had been left to his unaided judgment, 
and between them the young girl was safely piloted 
through the perilous straits in which she came near 
shipwreck. 

I know that it is commonly said of her that every 
male friend of hers must become her lover unless he 
is already lassoed by another. Hfaut passer par la. 
The young Doctor is, I think, safe, for I am convinced 
that he is bewitched with Delilah. Since she has left 
us, he has seemed rather dejected ; I feel sure that he 
misses her. We all do, but he more seriously than 
the rest of us. I have said that I cannot tell whether 
the Counsellor is to be counted as one of Number 
Five's lambs or not, but he evidently admires her, and 
if he is not fascinated, looks as if he were very near 
that condition. 

It was a more delicate matter about which the 
Tutor talked with her. Something which she had 
pleasantly said to him about the two Annexes led him 
to ask her, more or less seriously, it may be remem- 
bered, about the fitness of either of them to be the 
wife of a young man in his position. She talked so 
sensibly, as it seemed to him, about it that he contin- 
ued the conversation, and. shy as he was, became quite 
easy and confidential in her company. The Tutor is 



242 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

not only a poet, but is a great reader of the poetry of 
many languages. It so happened that Number Five 
was puzzled, one day, in reading a sonnet of Petrarch, 
and had recourse to the Tutor to explain the difficult 
passage. She found him so thoroughly instructed, so 
clear, so much interested, so ready to impart know- 
ledge, and so happy in his way of doing it, that she 
asked him if he would not allow her the privilege of 
reading an Italian author under his guidance, now and 
then. 

The Tutor found Number Five an apt scholar, and 
something more than that ; for while, as a linguist, he 
was, of course, her master, her intelligent comments 
brought out the beauties of an author in a way to 
make the text seem like a different version. They did 
not always confine themselves to the book they were 
reading. Number Five showed some curiosity about 
the Tutor's relations with the two Annexes. She sug- 
gested whether it would not be well to ask one or both 
of them in to take part in their readings. The Tutor 
blushed and hesitated. " Perhaps you would like to 
ask one of them," said Number Five. " Which one 
shall it be ? " " It makes no difference to me which," 
he answered, " but I do not see that we need either." 
Number Five did not press the matter further. So 
the young Tutor and Number Five read together pretty 
regularly, and came to depend upon their meeting 
over a book as one of their stated seasons of enjoy- 
ment. He is so many years younger than she is that 
I do not suppose he will have to pass par la, as most 
of her male friends have done. I tell her sometimes 
that she reminds me of my Alma Mater, always young, 
always fresh in her attractions, with her scholars all 
round her, many of them graduates, or to graduate 
sooner or later. 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 243 

What do I mean by graduates ? Why, that they 
have made love to her, and would be entitled to her 
diploma, if she gave a parchment to each one of 
them who had had the courage to face the inevitable 
About the Counsellor I am, as I have said, in doubt. 
Who wrote that " I Like You and I Love You," which 
we found in the sugar-bowl the other day? Was 
it a graduate who had felt the " icy dagger," or only 
a candidate for graduation who was afraid of it ? So 
completely does she subjugate those who come under 
her influence that I believe she looks upon it as a mat- 
ter of course that the fateful question will certainly 
come, often after a brief acquaintance. She confessed 
as much to me, who am in her confidence, and not a 
candidate for graduation from her academy. Her 
graduates — her lambs I called them — are commonly 
faithful to her, and though now and then one may 
have gone off and sulked in solitude, most of them 
feel kindly to her, and to those who have shared the 
common fate of her suitors. I do really believe that 
some of them would be glad to see her captured by 
any one, if such there can be, who is worthy of her. 
She is the best of friends, they say, but can she love 
anybody, as so many other women do, or seem to ? 
Why should n't our Musician, who is evidently fond 
of her company, and sings and plays duets with her, 
steal her heart as Piozzi stole that of the pretty and 
bright Mrs. Thrale, as so many music-teachers have 
run away with their pupils' hearts ? At present she 
seems to be getting along very placidly and content- 
edly with her young friend the Tutor. There is some- 
thing quite charming in their relations vith each other. 
He knows many things she does not, for he is reck- 
oned one of the most learned in his literary specialty 



244 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

of all the young men of his time ; and it can be a 
question of only a few years when some first-class pro- 
fessorship will be offered him. She, on the other hand, 
has so much more experience, so much more practi- 
cal wisdom, than he has that he consults her on many 
every-day questions, as he did, or made believe do, 
about that of making love to one of the two Annexes. 
I had thought, when we first sat round the tea-table, 
that she was good for the bit of romance I wanted ; 
but since she has undertaken to be a kind of half- 
maternal friend to the young Tutor, I am afraid I 
shall have to give her up as the heroine of a romantic 
episode. It would be a pity if there were nothing to 
commend these papers to those who take up this peri- 
odical but essays, more or less significant, on subjects 
more or less interesting to the jaded and impatient 
readers of the numberless stories and entertaining 
articles which crowd the magazines of this prolific 
period. A whole year of a tea-table as large as ours 
without a single love passage in it would be discredit- 
able to the company. We must find one, or make 
one, before the tea-things are taken away and the 
table is no longer spread. 

The Dictator turns preacher. 

We have so many light and playful talks over the 
teacups that some readers may be surprised to find us 
taking up the most serious and solemn subject which 
can occupy a human intelligence. The sudden ap- 
pearance among our New England Protestants of the 
doctrine of purgatory as a possibility, or even proba- 
bility, has startled the descendants of the Puritans. 
It has naturally led to a reconsideration of the doc- 
trine of eternal punishment. It is on that subject 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 245 

that Number Five and I have talked together, I love 
to listen to her, for she talks from the promptings of 
a true woman's heart. I love to talk to her, for I 
learn my own thoughts better in that way than in any 
other. " Uappetit vicnt en mangeant" the French 
saying has it. " L'esprit merit en causant ; " that is, 
if one can find the right persons to talk with. 

The subject which has specially interested Number 
Five and myself, of late, was suggested to me in the 
following way. 

Some two years ago I received a letter from a 
clergyman who bears by inheritance one of the most 
distinguished names which has done honor to the 
American " Orthodox " pulpit. This letter requested 
of me " a contribution to a proposed work which was 
to present in their own language the views of ( many 
men of many minds ' on the subject of future punish- 
ment. It was in my mind to let the public hear not 
only from professional theologians, but from other 
professions, as from jurists on the alleged but disputed 
value of the hangman's w r hip overhanging the witness- 
box, and from physicians on the working of beliefs 
about the future life in the minds of the dangerously 
sick. And I could not help thinking what a good 
thing it would be to draw out [the present writer] 
upon his favorite borderland between the spiritual 
and the material." The communication came to me 9 
as the writer reminds me in a recent letter, at a 
"painfully inopportune time," and though it was 
courteously answered, was not made the subject of a 
special reply. 

This request confers upon me a certain right to ex- 
press my opinion on this weighty subject without fear 
and without reproach even from those who might be 



246 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

ready to take offence at one of the laity for meddling 
with pulpit questions. It shows also that this is not a 
dead issue in our community, as some of the younger 
generation seem to think. There are some, there may 
be many, who would like to hear what impressions 
one has received on the subject referred to, after a 
long life in which he has heard and read a great deal 
about the matter. There is a certain gravity in the 
position of one who is, in the order of nature, very 
near the undiscovered country. A man who has 
passed his eighth decade feels as if he were already in 
the antechamber of the apartments which he may be 
called to occupy in the house of many mansions. His 
convictions regarding the future of our race are likely 
to be serious, and his expressions not lightly uttered. 
The question my correspondent suggests is a tremen- 
dous one. No other interest compares for one mo- 
ment with that belonging to it. It is not only our- 
selves that it concerns, but all whom we love or ever 
have loved, all our human brotherhood, as well as our 
whole idea of the Being who made us and the relation 
in which He stands to his creatures. In attempting 
to answer my correspondent's question, I shall no 
doubt repeat many things I have said before in dif- 
ferent forms, on different occasions. This is no more 
than every clergyman does habitually, and it would be 
hard if I could not have the same license which the 
professional preacher enjoys so fully. 

Number Five and I have occasionally talked on re- 
ligious questions, and discovered many points of agree- 
ment in our views. Both of us grew up under the old 
44 Orthodox " or Calvinistic system of belief. Both of 
us accepted it in our early years as a part of our edu- 
cation. Our experience is a common one. William 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 247 

Cullen Bryant says of himself, " The Calvinistic 
system of divinity I adopted of course, as I heard 
nothing else taught from the pulpit, and supposed it 
to be the accepted belief of the religious world." But 
it was not the " five points " which remained in the 
young poet's memory and shaped his higher life. It 
was the influence of his mother that left its permanent 
impression after the questions and answers of the As- 
sembly's Catechism had faded out, or remained in 
memory only as fossil survivors of an extinct or fast- 
disappearing theological formation. The important 
point for him, as for so many other children of Puri- 
tan descent, was not his father's creed, but his 
mother's character, precepts, and example. " She 
was a person," he says, " of excellent practical sense, 
of a quick and sensitive moral judgment, and had no 
patience with any form of deceit or duplicity. Her 
prompt condemnation of injustice, even in those in- 
stances in which it is tolerated by the world, made a 
strong impression upon me in early life ; and if, in 
the discussion of public questions, I have in my riper 
age endeavored to keep in view the great rule of right 
without much regard to persons, it has been owing in 
a great degree to the force of her example, which 
taught me never to countenance a wrong because 
others did." 

I have quoted this passage because it was an expe- 
rience not wholly unlike my own, and in certain re- 
spects like that of Number Five. To grow up in a 
narrow creed and to grow out of it is a tremendous 
trial of one's nature. There is always a bond of fel- 
lowship between those who have been through such an 
ordeal. 

The experiences we have had in common naturally 



248 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

lead us to talk over the theological questions which at 
this time are constantly presenting themselves to the 
public, not only in the books and papers expressly de- 
voted to that class of subjects, but in many of the 
newspapers and popular periodicals, from the week- 
lies to the quarterlies. The pulpit used to lay down 
the law to the pews ; at the present time, it is of more 
consequence what the pews think than what the min- 
ister does, for the obvious reason that the pews can 
change their minister, and often do, whereas the min- 
ister cannot change the pews, or can do so only to a 
very limited extent. The preacher's garment is cut 
according to the pattern of that of the hearers, for the 
most part. Thirty years ago, when I was writing on 
theological subjects, I came in for a very pretty share 
of abuse, such as it was the fashion of that day, at 
least in certain quarters, to bestow upon those who 
were outside of the high-walled enclosures in which 
many persons, not naturally unamiable or exclusive, 
found themselves imprisoned. Since that time what 
changes have taken place ! Who will believe that a 
well-behaved and reputable citizen could have been 
denounced as a " moral parricide," because he attacked 
some of the doctrines in which he was supposed to 
have been brought up ? A single thought should have 
prevented the masked theologian who abused his in= 
cognito from using such libellous language. 

Much, and in many families most, of the religious 
teaching of children is committed to the mother. The 
experience of William Cullen Bryant, which I have 
related in his own words, is that of many New Eng= 
land children. Now, the sternest dogmas that ever 
came from a soul crauiped or palsied by an obsolete 
creed become wonderfully softened in passing between 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 249 

the lips of a mother. The cruel doctrine at which all 
but case-hardened "professionals" shudder comes out, 
as she teaches and illustrates it, as unlike its original 
as the milk which a peasant mother gives her babe is 
unlike the coarse food which furnishes her nourish- 
ment. The virus of a cursing creed is rendered com 
paratively harmless by the time it reaches the young 
sinner in the nursery. Its effects fall as far short of 
what might have been expected from its virulence as 
the pearly vaccine vesicle falls short of the terrors of 
the confluent small -pox. Controversialists should 
therefore be careful (for their own sakes, for they 
hurt nobody so much as themselves) how they use 
such terms as " parricide " as characterizing those who 
do not agree in all points with the fathers whom or 
whose memory they honor and venerate. They might 
with as much propriety call them matricides, if they 
did not agree with the milder teachings of their moth- 
ers. I can imagine Jonathan Edwards in the nursery 
with his three-year-old child upon his knee. The 
child looks up to his face and says to him, — 

" Papa, nurse tells me that you say God hates me 
worse than He hates one of those horrid ugly snakes 
that crawl all round. Does God hate me so ? " 

" Alas ! my child, it is but too true. So long as 
you are out of Christ you are as a viper, and worse 
than a viper, in his sight." 

By and by, Mrs. Edwards, one of the loveliest of 
women and sweetest of mothers, comes into the nur- 
sery. The child is crying. 

" What is the matter, my darling ? " 

"Papa has been telling me that God hates me 
worse than a snake." 

Poor, gentle, poetical, sensitive, spiritual, almost 



250 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

celestial Mrs. Jonathan Edwards ! On the one hand 
the terrible sentence conceived, written down, given to 
the press, by the child's father ; on the other side the 
trusting child looking up at her, and all the mother 
pleading in her heart against the frightful dogma of 
her revered husband. Do you suppose she left that 
poison to rankle in the tender soul of her darling? 
Would it have been moral parricide for a son of the 
great divine to have repudiated the doctrine which 
degraded his blameless infancy to the condition and 
below the condition of the reptile ? Was it parricide 
in the second or third degree when his descendant 
struck out that venomous sentence from the page in 
which it stood as a monument to what depth Christian 
heathenism could sink under the teaching of the great 
master of logic and spiritual inhumanity ? It is too 
late to be angry about the abuse a well-meaning 
writer received thirty years ago. The whole atmos- 
phere has changed since then. It is mere childish- 
ness to expect men to believe as their fathers did ; 
that is, if they have any minds of their own. The 
world is a whole generation older and wiser than 
when the father was of his son's age. 

So far as 1 have observed persons nearing the end 
of life, the Roman Catholics understand the business 
of dying better than Protestants. They have an ex= 
pert by them, armed with spiritual specifics, in which 
they both, patient and priestly ministrant, place im- 
plicit trust. Confession, the Eucharist, Extreme Unc= 
tion, — these all inspire a confidence which without 
this symbolism is too apt to be wanting in over-sensi- 
tive natures. They have been peopled in earlier years 
with ghastly spectres of avenging fiends, moving in a 
sleepless world of devouring flames and smothering 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 251 

exhalations ; where nothing lives but the sinner, the 
fiends, and the reptiles who help to make lifa an un- 
ending torture. It is no wonder that these images 
sometimes return to the enfeebled intelligence. To 
exorcise them, the old. Church of Christendom has her 
mystic formulas, of which no rationalistic prescription! 
can take the place. If Cowper had been a good Ro« 
man Catholic, instead of having his conscience han- 
dled by a Protestant like John Newton, he would not 
have died despairing, looking upon himself as a casta- 
way. I have seen a good many Roman Catholics on 
their dying beds, and it always appeared to me that 
they accepted the inevitable with a composure which 
showed that their belief, whether or not the best to 
live by, was a better one to die by than most of the 
harder creeds which have replaced it. 

In the more intelligent circles of American society 
one may question anything and everything, if he will 
only do it civilly. We may talk about eschatology, — 
the science of last things, — or, if you will, the nat- 
ural history of the undiscovered country, without 
offence before anybody except young children and 
very old wonm of both sexes. In our New England 
the great Andover discussion and the heretical mis- 
sionary question have benumbed all sensibility on this 
subject as entirely, as completely, as the new local an- 
aesthetic, cocaine, deadens the sensibility of the part 
to which it is applied, so that the eye may have its 
mote or beam plucked out without feeling it, — as the 
novels of Zola and Maupassant have hardened the 
delicate nerve-centres of the women who have fed 
their imaginations on the food they have furnished. 

The generally professed belief of the Protestant 



252 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

world as embodied in their published creeds is that 
the great mass of mankind are destined to an eternity 
of suffering. That this eternity is to be one of bod- 
ily pain — of " torment " — is the literal teaching of 
Scripture, which has been literally interpreted by the 
theologians, the poets, and the artists of many long 
ages which followed the acceptance of the recorded 
legends of the church as infallible. The doctrine has 
always been recognized, as it is now, as a very terrible 
one. It has found a support in the story of the fall 
of man, and the view taken of the relation of man to 
his Maker since that event. The hatred of God to 
mankind in virtue of their " first disobedience " and 
inherited depravity is at the bottom of it. The ex- 
tent to which that idea was carried is well shown in 
the expressions I have borrowed from Jonathan Ed- 
wards. According to his teaching, — and he was a 
reasoner who knew what he was talking about, what 
was involved in the premises of the faith he accepted, 
— man inherits the curse of God as his principal 
birthright. 

What shall we say to the doctrine of the fall of 
man as the ground of inflicting endless misery on 
the human race ? A man to be punished for what 
he could not help ! He was expected to be called to 
account for Adam's sin. It is singular to notice that 
the reasoning of the wolf with the lamb should be 
transferred to the dealings of the Creator with his 
creatures. "You stirred the brook up and made my 
drinking-place muddy." " But, please your wolf ship. 
I could n't do that, for I stirred the water far down 
the stream, — below your drinking-place." " Well, 
anyhow, your father troubled it a year or two ago, 
and that is the same thing." So the wolf falls upon 



OYER THE TEACUPS. 253 

the lamb and makes a meal of him. That is wolf 
logic, — and theological reasoning. 

How shall we characterize the doctrine of endless 
torture as the destiny of most of those who have 
lived, and are living, on this planet ? I prefer to let 
another writer speak of it. Mr. John Morley uses 
the following words : ' ; The horrors of what is per- 
haps the most frightful idea that has ever corroded 
human character, — the idea of eternal punishment." 
Sismondi, the great historian, heard a sermon on eter- 
nal punishment, and vowed never again to enter an- 
other church holding the same creed. Romanism he 
considered a religion of mercy and peace by the side 
of what the English call the Reformation. — I men- 
tion these protests because I happen to find them 
among my notes, but it would be easy to accumulate 
examples of the same kind. When Cowper, at about 
the end of the last century, said satirically of the 
minister he was attacking, 

" He never mentioned hell to ears polite, " 

he was giving unconscious evidence that the sense of 
the barbarism of the idea was finding its way into the 
pulpit. When Burns, in the midst of the sulphurous 
orthodoxy of Scotland, dared to say, 

" The fear o' hell 's a hangman's whip 
To hand the wretch in order, " 

he was only appealing to the common sense and con> 
mon humanity of his fellow-countrymen. 

All the reasoning in the world, all the proof-texts 
in old manuscripts, cannot reconcile this supposition 
of a world of sleepless and endless torment with the 
declaration that " God is love." 

Where did this " frightful idea " come from ? We 



254 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

are surprised, as we grow older, to find that the le- 
gendary hell of the church is nothing more nor less 
than the Tartarus of the old heathen world. It has 
every mark of coming from the cruel heart of a 
barbarous despot. Some malignant and vindictive 
Sheik, some brutal Mezentius^ must have sat for many 
pictures of the Divinity. It was not enough to kill 
his captive enemy, after torturing him as much as 
ingenuity could contrive to do it. He escaped at last 
by death, but his conqueror could not give him up so 
easily, and so his vengeance followed him :'nto the 
unseen and unknown world. How the doctrine got 
in among the legends of the church we are no more 
bound to show than we are to account for the interca- 
lation of the " three witnesses " text, or the false in- 
sertion, or false omission, whichever it may be, of the 
last twelve verses of the Gospel of St Mark. We 
do not hang our grandmothers now, as our ancestors 
did theirs, on the strength of the positive command, 
" Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." 

The simple truth is that civilization has outgrown 
witchcraft, and is outgrowing the Christian Tartarus. 
The pulpit no longer troubles itself about witches and 
their evil doings. All the legends in the world could 
3iot arrest the decay of that superstition and all the 
edicts that grew out of it. All the stories that can be 
found in old manuscripts will never prevent the going 
out of the fires of the legendary Inferno. It is not 
much talked about nowadays to ears polite or impolite. 
Humanity is shocked and repelled by it. The heart 
of woman is in unconquerable rebellion against it. 
The more humane sects tear it from their " Bodies of 
Divinity " as if it were the flaming shirt of Nessus. 
A few doctrines with which it was bound up have 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 255 

dropped or are dropping away from it : the primal 
curse ; consequential damages to give infinite exten- 
sion to every transgression of the law of God ; invert- 
ing the natural order of relative obligations ; stretch- 
ing the smallest of finite offenses to the proportions 
of the infinite ; making the babe in arms the respon- 
sible being, and not the parent who gave it birth and 
determined its conditions of existence. 

After a doctrine like " the hangman's whip " has 
served its purpose, — if it ever had any useful pur- 
pose, — after a doctrine like that of witchcraft has 
hanged old women enough, civilization contrives to get 
rid of it. When we say that civilization crowds out 
the old superstitious legends, we recognize two chief 
causes. The first is the naked individual protest ; the 
voice of the inspiration which giveth man understand- 
ing. This shows itself conspicuously in the modern 
poets. Burns in Scotland, Bryant, Longfellow, Whit- 
tier, in America, preached a new gospel to the suc- 
cessors of men like Thomas Boston and Jonathan 
Edwards. In due season, the growth of knowledge, 
chiefly under the form of that part of knowledge called 
science, so changes the views of the universe that 
many of its long-unchallenged legends become no more 
than nursery tales. The text-books of astronomy and 
geology work their way in between the questions and 
answers of the time-honored catechisms. The doctrine 
of evolution, so far as it is accepted, changes the whole 
relations of man to the creative power. It substitutes 
infinite hope in the place of infinite despair for the 
vast majority of mankind. Instead of a shipwreck, 
from which a few cabin passengers and others are to 
be saved in the long-boat, it gives mankind a vessel 
built to endure the tempests, and at last to reach a 



256 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

port where at the worst the passengers can find rest, 
and where they may hope for a home better than any 
which they ever had in their old country. It is all 
very, well to say that men and women had their choice 
whether they would reach the safe harbor or not. 

" Go to it grandam, child ; 
Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will 
Give it a plum, a cherry and a fig." 

We know what the child will take. So which course 
we shall take depends very much on the way the choice 
is presented to us, and on what the chooser is by na- 
ture. TV hat he is by nature is not determined by 
himself, but by his parentage. " They know not what 
they do." In one sense this is true of every human 
being. The agent does not know, never can know, 
what makes him that which he is. What we most 
want to ask of our Maker is an unfolding of the divine 
purpose in putting human beings into conditions in 
which such numbers of them would be sure to go 
wrong. We want an advocate of helpless humanity 
whose task it shall be, in the words of Milton, 

"To justify the ways of God to man." 

We have heard Milton's argument, but for the reali= 
zation of his vision of the time 

" When Hell itself shall pass away, 
And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day, " 

our suffering race must wait in patience. 

The greater part of the discourse the reader has had 
before him was delivered over the teacups one Sunday 
afternoon. The Mistress looked rather grave, as if 
doubtful whether she ought not to signify her disap- 
probation of what seemed to her dangerous doctrine. 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 257 

However, as she knew that I was a good church-goer 
and was on the best terms with her minister, she said 
nothing to show that she had taken the alarm. Num- 
ber Five listened approvingly. We had talked the 
question over well, and were perfectly agreed on the 
main point. How could it be otherwise? Do you 
suppose that any intellectual, spiritual woman, with a 
heart under her bodice, can for a moment seriously 
believe that the greater number of the high-minded 
men, the noble and lovely women, the ingenuous and 
affectionate children, whom she knows and honors or 
loves, are to be handed over to the experts in a great 
torture-chamber, in company with the vilest creatures 
that have once worn human shape ? 

" If there is such a world as used to be talked about 
from the pulpit, you may depend upon it, " she said to 
me once, " there will soon be organized a, Humane 
Society in heaven, and a mission established among 
4 the spirits in prison.' " 

Number Five is a regular church-goer, as I am. I 
do not believe either of us would darken the doors of 
a church if we were likely to hear any of the " old- 
fashioned " sermons, such as I used to listen to in 
former years from a noted clergyman, whose specialty 
was the doctrine of eternal punishment. But you may 
go to the churches of almost any of our Protestant 
denominations, and hear sermons by which you can 
profit, because the ministers are generally good men 9 
whose moral and spiritual natures are above the aver- 
age, and who know that the harsh preaching of two 
or three generations ago would offend and alienate a 
large part of their audience. So neither Number Five 
nor I are hypocrites in attending church or " going to 
meeting." I am afraid it does not make a great deal 



258 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

of difference to either of us what may be the estab- 
lished creed of the worshipping assembly. That is a 
matter of great interest, perhaps of great importance, 
to them, but of much less, comparatively, to us. Com- 
panionship in worship, and sitting quiet for an hour 
while a trained speaker, presumably somewhat better 
than we are, stirs up our spiritual nature, — these are 
reasons enough to Number Five, as to me, for regular 
attendance on divine worship. 

Number Seven is of a different way of thinking and 
feeling. He insists upon it that the churches keep in 
their confessions of faith statements which they do not 
believe, and that it is notorious that they are afraid to 
meddle with them. The Anglo-American church has 
dropped the Athanasian Creed from its service ; the 
English mother church is afraid to. There are plenty 
of Universalists, Number Seven says, in the Episcopa- 
lian and other Protestant churches, but they do not 
avow their belief in any frank and candid fashion. 
The churches know very well, he maintains, that the 
fear of everlasting punishment more than any or all 
other motives is the source of their power and the 
support of their organizations. Not only are the fears 
of mankind the whip to scourge and the bridle to re- 
strain them, but they are the basis of an almost incal- 
culable material interest. " Talk about giving up the 
doctrine of endless punishment by fire ! " exclaimed 
Number Seven ; " there is more capital embarked in 
the subterranean fire-chambers than in all the iron- 
furnaces on the face of the earth. To think what an 
army of clerical beggars would be turned loose on the 
world, if once those raging flames were allowed to go 
out or to calm down ! Who can wonder that the old 
conservatives draw back startled and almost fright 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 259 

ened at the thought that there may be a possible escape 
for some victims whom the Devil was thought to have 
secured ? How many more generations will pass be- 
fore Milton's alarming prophecy will find itself real 
ized in the belief of civilized mankind ? " 

Remember that Number Seven is called a " crank w 
by many persons, and take his remarks for just what 
they are worth, and no more. 

Out of the preceding conversation must have origin- 
ated the following poem, which was found in the com* 
mon receptacle of these versified contributions : — 

TARTARUS. 

While in my simple gospel creed 
That " God is Love " so plain I read, 
Shall dreams of heathen birth affright 
My pathway through the coming night? 
Ah, Lord of life, though spectres pale 
Fill with their threats the shadowy vale, 
With Thee my faltering steps to aid, 
How can I dare to be afraid ? 

Shall mouldering page or fading scroll 
Outface the charter of the soul ? 
Shall priesthood's palsied arm protect 
The wrong our human hearts reject, 
And smite the lips whose shuddering cry 
Proclaims a cruel creed a lie ? 
The wizard's rope we disallow 
Was justice once, — is murder now ! 

Is there a world of blank despair, 
And dwells the Omnipresent there ? 
Does He behold with smile serene 
The shows of that unending scene, 
Where sleepless, hopeless anguish lies-, 
And, ever dying, never dies ? 



260 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

Say, does He hear the sufferer's groan, 
And is that child of wrath his own ? 

O mortal, wavering in thy trust, 
Lift thy pale forehead from the dust ! 
The mists that cloud thy darkened eyes 
Fade ere they reach the o'erarching skies 
When the blind heralds of despair 
Would bid thee doubt a Father's care, 
Look up from earth, and read above 
On heaven's blue tablet, God is Love ! 



XL 

TJie tea is sweetened. 

We have been going on very pleasantly of late, 
each of us pretty well occupied with his or her special 
business. The Counsellor has been pleading in a 
great case, and several of The Teacups were in the 
court-room. I thought, but I will not be certain, that 
some of his arguments were addressed to Number 
Five rather than to the jury, — the more eloquent 
passages especially. 

Our young Doctor seems to me to be gradually get- 
ting known in the neighborhood and beyond it. A 
member of one of the more influential families, whose 
regular physician has gone to Europe, has sent for 
him to come and see her, and as the patient is a nerv- 
ous lady, who has nothing in particular the matter 
with her, he is probably in for a good many visits and 
a long bill by and by. He has even had a call at a 
distance of some miles from home, — at least he has 
had to hire a conveyance frequently of late, for he has 
not yet set up his own horse and chaise. We do not 
like to ask him about who his patient may be, but he 
or she is probably a person of some consequence, as 
he is absent several hours on these out-of-town visits. 
He may get a good practice before his bald spot 
makes its appearance, for I have looked for it many 
times without as yet seeing a sign of it. I am sure 
he must feel encouraged, for he has been very bright 



262 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

and cheerful of late ; and if he sometimes looks at our 
new handmaid as if he wished she were Delilah, I do 
not think he is breaking his heart about her absence. 
Perhaps he finds consolation in the company of the 
two Annexes, or one of them, — but which, I cannot 
make out. He is in consultation occasionally with 
Number Five, too, but whether professionally or not I 
have no means of knowing. I cannot for the life of 
me see what Number Five wants of a doctor for her- 
self, so perhaps it is another difficult case in which 
her womanly sagacity is called upon to help him. 

In the mean time she and the Tutor continue their 
readings. In fact, it seems as if these readings were 
growing more frequent, and lasted longer than they 
did at first. There is a little arbor in the grounds 
connected with our place of meeting, and sometimes 
they have gone there for their readings. Some of 
The Teacups have listened outside once in a while, 
for the Tutor reads well, and his clear voice must be 
heard in the more emphatic passages, whether one is 
expressly listening or not. But besides the reading 
there is now and then some talking, and persons talk- 
ing in an arbor do not always remember that lattice- 
work, no matter how closely the vines cover it, is not 
impenetrable to the sound of the human voice. There 
was a listener one day, — it was not one of The Tea- 
cups, I am happy to say, — who heard and reported 
some fragments of a conversation which reached his 
ear. Nothing but the profound intimacy which exists 
between myself and the individual reader whose eyes 
are on this page would induce me to reveal what I 
was told of this conversation. The first words seem 
to have been in reply to some question. 

« Why, my dear friend, how can you think of such 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 263 

a thing ? Do you know — I am — old enough to be 
your — [I think she must have been on the point of 
saying mother, but that was more than an}' woman 
could be expected to say] — old enough to be your — 
aunt?" 

" To be sure you are," answered the Tutor, " and 
what of it ? I have two aunts, both younger than I 
am. Your years may be more than mine, but your 
life is fuller of youthful vitality than mine is. I 
never feel so young as when I have been with you. I 
don't believe in settling affinities by the almanac. 
You know what I have told you more than once ; you 
have n't ' bared the ice-cold dagger's edge ' upon me 
yet ; may I not cherish the " . . . 

AVhat a pity that the listener did not hear the rest 
of the sentence and the reply to it, if there was one ! 
The readings went on the same as before, but I 
thought that Number Five was rather more silent and 
more pensive than she had been. 

I was much pleased when the American Annex 
came to me one day and told me that she and the 
English Annex were meditating an expedition, in 
which they wanted the other Teacups to join. About 
a dozen miles from us is an educational institution 
of the higher grade, where a large number of young 
ladies are trained in literature, art, and science, very 
much as their brothers are trained in the colleges. 
Our two young ladies have already been through 
courses of this kind in different schools, and are now 
busy with those more advanced studies which are ven- 
tured upon by only a limited number of " graduates." 
They have heard a good deal about this institution, 
but have never visited it. 



264 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

Every year, as the successive classes finish their 
course, there is a grand reunion of the former stu- 
dents, with an " exhibition," as it is called, in which 
the graduates of the year have an opportunity of 
showing their proficiency in the various branches 
taught. On that occasion prizes are awarded for ex- 
cellence in different departments. It would be hard 
to find a more interesting ceremony. These girls, 
now recognized as young ladies, are going forth as 
missionaries of civilization among our busy people. 
They are many of them to be teachers, and those who 
have seen what opportunities they have to learn will 
understand their fitness for that exalted office. Many 
are to be the wives and mothers of the generation 
next coming upon the stage, Young and beautiful, — 
" youth is always beautiful," said old Samuel Rogers, 
— their countenances radiant with developed intelli- 
gence, their complexions, their figures, their move- 
ments, all showing that they have had plenty of out- 
door as well as indoor exercise, and have lived well in 
all respects, one would like to read on the wall of the 
hall where they are assembled, — 

Siste, viator! 
Si uxorem requiris, circumspice ! 

This proposed expedition was a great event in our 
comparatively quiet circle. The Mistress, who was 
interested in the school, undertook to be the matron 
of the party. The young Doctor, who knew the roads 
better than any of us, was to be out pilot. He ar- 
ranged it so that he should have the two Annexes un- 
der his more immediate charge. We were all on the 
lookout to see which of the two was to be the favored 
one, for it was pretty well settled among The Teacups 
that a wife he must have, whether the bald spot came 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 265 

or not ; he was getting into business, and he could not 
achieve a complete success as a bachelor. 

Number Five and the Tutor seemed to come to- 
gether as a matter of course. I confess that I could 
not help regretting that our pretty Delilah was not 
to be one of the party. She always looked so young, 
so fresh, — she would have enjoyed the excursion so 
much, that if she had been still with us I would have 
told the Mistress that she must put on her best dress ; 
and if she had n't one nice enough, I would give her 
one myself. I thought, too, that our young Doctor 
would have liked to have her with us ; but he ap- 
peared to be getting along very well with the An- 
nexes, one of whom it seems likely that he will annex 
to himself and his fortunes, if she fancies him, which 
is not improbable. 

The organizing of this expedition was naturally a 
cause of great excitement among The Teacups. The 
party had to be arranged in such a way as to suit all 
concerned, which was a delicate matter. It was finally 
managed in this way : The Mistress was to go with a 
bodyguard, consisting of myself, the Professor, and 
Number Seven, who was good company, with all his 
oddities. The young Doctor was to take the two An- 
nexes in a wagon, and the Tutor was to drive Number 
Five in a good old-fashioned chaise drawn by a well- 
conducted family horse. As for the Musician, he had 
gone over early, by special invitation, to take a part in 
certain musical exercises which were to have a place 
in the exhibition. This arrangement appeared to be 
in every respect satisfactory. The Doctor was in high 
spirits, apparently delighted, and devoting himself 
with great gallantry to his two fair companions. The 
only question which intruded itself was, whether he 



266 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

might not have preferred the company of one to that 
of two. But both looked very attractive in their best 
dresses : the English Annex, the rosier and heartier 
of the two ; the American girl, more delicate in fea- 
tures, more mobile and excitable, but suggesting the 
thought that she would tire out before the other. 
Which of these did he most favor ? It was hard to 
say. He seemed to look most at the English girl, 
and yet he talked more with the American girl. In 
short, he behaved particularly well, and neither of the 
young ladies could complain that she was not attended 
to. As to the Tutor and Number Five, their going 
together caused no special comment. Their intimacy 
was accepted as an established fact, and nothing but 
the difference in their ages prevented the conclusion 
that it was love, and not mere friendship, which 
brought them together. There was, no doubt, a strong 
feeling among many people that Number Five's affec- 
tions were a kind of Gibraltar or Ehrenbreitstein, — 
say rather a high table-land in the region of perpetual, 
unmelting snow. It was hard for these people to be- 
lieve that any man of mortal mould could find a foot- 
hold in that impregnable fortress, — could climb to 
that height and find the flower of love among its 
glaciers. The Tutor and Number Five were both 
quiet, thoughtful : he, evidently captivated ; she, — 
what was the meaning of her manner to him ? Say 
that she seemed fond of him, as she might be were he 
her nephew, — one for whom she had a special liking. 
If she had a warmer feeling than this, she could 
hardly know how to manage it ; for she was so used 
to having love made to her without returning it that 
she would naturally be awkward in dealing with the 
new experience. 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 267 

The Doctor drove a lively five-year-old horse, and 
took the lead. The Tutor followed with a quiet, 
steady-going nag ; if he had driven the five-year-old, 
I would not have answered for the necks of the pair 
in the chaise, for he was too much taken up with the 
subject they were talking of, to be very careful about 
his driving. The Mistress and her escort brought up 
the rear, — I holding the reins, the Professor at my 
side, and Number Seven sitting with the Mistress. 

We arrived at the institution a little later than we 
had expected to, and the students were flocking into 
the hall, where the Commencement exercises were to 
take place, and the medal-scholars were to receive the 
tokens of their excellence in the various departments. 
From our seats w r e could see the greater part of the 
assembly, — not quite all, however of the pupils. A 
pleasing sight it was to look upon, this array of young 
ladies dressed in white, with their class badges, and 
with the ribbon of the shade of blue affected by the 
scholars of the institution. If Solomon in all his 
glory was not to be compared to a lily, a whole bed 
of lilies could not be compared to this garden-bed of 
youthful womanhood. 

The performances w r ere very much the same as 
most of us have seen at the academies and collegiate 
schools. Some of the graduating class read their 
" compositions," one of which w r as a poem, — an echo 
of the prevailing American echoes, of course, but 
prettily worded and intelligently read. Then there 
was a song sung by a choir of the pupils, led by their 
instructor, who was assisted by the Musician whom 
\ve count among The Teacups. There was something 
in one of the voices that reminded me of one I had 
heard before. Where could it have been ? I am 



268 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

sure I cannot remember. There are some good voices 
in our village choir, but none so pure and bird-like as 
this. A sudden thought came into my head, but I 
kept it to myself. I heard a tremulous catching of 
the breath, something like a sob, close by me. It was 
the Mistress, — she was crying. What was she cry- 
ing for ? It was impressive, certainly, to listen to 
these young voices, many of them blending for the 
last time, — for the scholars were soon to be scattered 
all over the country, and some of them beyond its 
boundaries, — but why the Mistress was so carried 
away, I did not know. She must be more impressible 
than most of us ; yet I thought Number Five also 
looked as if she were having a struggle with herself 
to keep down some rebellious signs of emotion. 

The exercises went on very pleasingly until they 
came to the awarding of the gold medal of the year 
and the valedictory, which was to be delivered by the 
young lady to whom it was to be presented. The 
name was called; it was one not unfamiliar to our 
ears, and the bearer of it — the Delilah of our tea- 
table, Avis as she was known in the school and else- 
where — rose in her place and came forward, so that 
for the first time on that day, we looked upon her. It 
was a sensation for The Teacups. Our modest, quiet 
waiting-girl was the best scholar of her year. We 
had talked French before her, and we learned that 
she was the best French scholar the teacher had ever 
had in the school. We had never thought of her ex- 
cept as a pleasing and well-trained handmaiden, and 
here she was an accomplished young lady. 

Avis went through her part very naturally and grace- 
fully, and when it was finished, and she stood before 
us with the medal glittering on her breast, we did not 






OVER THE TEACUPS. 269 

know whether to smile or to cry, — some of us did 
one, and some the other. — We all had an opportunity 
to see her and congratulate her before we left the in- 
stitution. The mystery of her six weeks' serving at 
our table was easily solved. She had been studying 
too hard and too long, and required some change of 
scene and occupation. She had a fancy for trying to 
see if she could support herself as so many young 
women are obliged to, and found a place with us, — 
the Mistress only knowing her secret. 

" She is to be our young Doctor's wife ! " the Mis- 
tress whispered to me, and did some more crying, — 
not for grief, certainly. 

Whether our young Doctor's long visits to a neigh- 
boring town had anything to do with the fact that 
Avis was at that institution, whether she was the pa- 
tient he visited or not, may be left in doubt. At all 
events, he had always driven off in the direction which 
would carry him to the place where she was at school. 

I have attended a large number of celebrations, 
commencements, banquets, soirees, and so forth, and 
done my best to help on a good many of them. In 
fact, I have become rather too well known in connec- 
tion with " occasions," and it has cost me no little 
trouble. I believe there is no kind of occurrence for 
which I have not been requested to contribute some- 
thing in prose or verse. It is sometimes very hard to 
say no to the requests. If one is in the right mood 
when he or she writes an occasional poem, it seems as 
if nothing could have been easier. " Why, that piece 
run off jest like ile. I don't bullieve," the unlettered 
applicant says to himself, — "I don't bullieve it took 
him ten minutes to write them verses." The good 



270 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

people have no suspicion of how much a single line, a 
single expression, may cost its author. The wits used 
to say that Rogers, — the poet once before referred to, 
old Samuel Rogers, author of the Pleasures of Mem- 
ory and giver of famous breakfasts, — was accustomed 
to have straw laid before the house whenever he had 
just given birth to a couplet. It is not quite so bad 
as that with most of us who are called upon to furnish, 
a poem, a song, a hymn, an ode for some grand meet- 
ing, but it is safe to say that many a trifling perform- 
ance has had more good honest work put into it than 
the minister's sermon of that week had cost him. If 
a vessel glides off the ways smoothly and easily at her 
launching, it does not mean that no great pains have 
been taken to secure the result. Because a poem is 
an "occasional" one, it does not follow that it has 
not taken as much time and skill as if it had been 
written without immediate, accidental, temporary mo- 
tive. Pindar's great odes were occasional poems, just 
as much as our Commencement and Phi Beta Kappa 
poems are, and yet they have come down among the 
most precious bequests of antiquity to modern times. 

The mystery of the young Doctor's long visits to 
the neighboring town was satisfactorily explained by 
what we saw and heard of his relations with our charm- 
ing " Delilah, " — for Delilah we could hardly help 
calling her. Our little handmaid, the Cinderella of 
the teacups, now the princess, or, what was better, the 
pride of the school to which she had belonged, lit for 
any position to which she might be called, was to be 
the wife of our young Doctor. It would not have been 
the right thing to proclaim the fact while she was a 
pupil, but now that she had finished her course of in- 
struction there was no need of making a secret of the 
engagement. 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 271 

So we have got our romance, our love-story out of 
our Teacups, as I hoped and expected that we should, 
but not exactly in the quarter where it might have 
been looked for. 

What did our two Annexes say to this unexpected 
turn of events ? They were good-hearted girls as ever 
lived, but they were human, like the rest of us, and 
women, like some of the rest of us. They behaved 
perfectly. They congratulated the Doctor, and hoped 
he would bring the young lady to the tea-table where 
she had played her part so becomingly. It is safe to 
say that each of the Annexes would have liked to be 
asked the lover's last question by the very nice young 
man who had been a pleasant companion at the table 
and elsewhere to each of them. That same question is 
the highest compliment a man can pay a woman, and 
a woman does not mind having a dozen or more such 
compliments to string on the rosary of her remem- 
brances. Whether either of them was glad, on the 
whole, that he had not offered himself to the other in 
preference to herself would be a mean, shabby ques- 
tion, and I think altogether too well of you who are 
reading this paper to suppose that you would entertain 
the idea of asking it. 

It was a very pleasant occasion when the Doctor 
brought Avis over to sit with us at the table where she 
used to stand and wait upon us. We wondered how 
we could for a moment have questioned that she was 
one to be waited upon, and not made for the humble 
office which nevertheless she performed so cheerfully 
and so well. 



272 OYER THE TEACUPS. 

Commencements and other Celebrations, American 
and English. 

The social habits of our people have undergone an 
immense change within the past half century, largely 
in consequence of the vast development of the means 
of intercourse between different neighborhoods. 

Commencements, college gatherings of all kinds, 
church assemblages, school anniversaries, town centen- 
nials, — all possible occasions for getting crowds to- 
gether are made the most of. " 'T is sixty years 
since, " — and a good many years over, — the time to 
which my memory extends. The great days of the 
year were, Election, — General Election on Wednes- 
. day, and Artillery Election on the Monday following, 
at which time lilacs were in bloom and 'lection buns 
were in order ; Fourth of July, when strawberries 
were just going out ; and Commencement, a grand 
time of feasting, fiddling, dancing, jollity, not to men- 
tion drunkenness and fighting, on the classic green 
of Cambridge. This was the season of melons and 
peaches. That is the way our boyhood chronicles 
events. It was odd that the literary festival should 
be turned into a Donnybrook fair, but so it was when 
I was a boy, and the tents and the shows and the 
crowds on the Common wei*e to the promiscuous many 
the essential parts of the great occasion. They had 
been so for generations, and it was only gradually that 
the Cambridge Saturnalia were replaced by the decen- 
cies and solemnities of the present sober anniversary. 

Nowadays our celebrations smack of the Sunday- 
school more than of the dancing hall. The aroma of 
the punch-bowl has given way to the milder flavor of 
lemonade and the cooling virtues of ice-cream. A 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 273 

strawberry festival is about as far as the dissipation of 
our social gatherings ventures. There was much that 
was objectionable in those swearing, drinking, fighting 
times, but they had a certain excitement for us boys 
of the years when the century was in its teens, which 
comes back to us not without its fascinations. The 
days of total abstinence are a great improvement over 
those of unlicensed license, but there was a picturesque 
element about the rowdyism of our old Commence- 
ment days, which had a charm for the eye of boyhood. 
My dear old friend, — book-friend, I mean, — whom I 
always called Daddy Gilpin (as I find Fitzgerald called 
Wordsworth, Daddy Wordsworth), — my old friend 
Gilpin, I say, considered the donkey more picturesque 
in a landscape than the horse. So a village fete as 
depicted by Teniers is more picturesque than a teetotal 
picnic or a Sabbath - school strawberry festival. Let 
us be thankful that the vicious picturesque is only a 
remembrance, and the virtuous commonplace a reality 
of to-day. 

What put all this into my head is something which 
the English Annex has been showing me. Most of 
my readers are somewhat acquainted with our own 
church and village celebrations. They know how they 
are organized ; the women always being the chief 
motors, and the machinery very much the same in one 
case as in another. Perhaps they would like to hear 
how such things are managed in England ; and that 
is just what they may learn from the pamphlet which 
was shown me by the English Annex, and of which I 
will give them a brief account. 

Some of us remember the Rev. Mr. Haweis, his 
lectures and his violin, which interested and amused 



274 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

us here in Boston a few years ago. Now Mr. Haweis, 
assisted by his intelligent and spirited wife, has charge 
of the parish of St. James, Westmoreland Street, 
Marylebone, London. On entering upon the twenty- 
fifth year of his incumbency in Marylebone, and the 
twenty-eighth of his ministry in the diocese of London, 
it was thought a good idea to have an " Evening Con- 
versazione and Fete." We can imagine just how such 
a meeting would be organized in one of our towns. 
Ministers, deacons, perhaps a member of Congress, 
possibly a Senator, and even, conceivably, his Excel- 
lency the Governor, and a long list of ladies lend their 
names to give lustre to the occasion. It is all very 
pleasant, unpretending, unceremonious, cheerful, well 
ordered, commendable, but not imposing. 

Now look at our Marylebone parish celebration, and 
hold your breath while the procession of great names 
passes before you. You learn at the outset that it is 
held Under Koyal Patronage, and read the names 
of two royal highnesses, one highness, a prince, and a 
princess. Then comes a list before which if you do 
not turn pale, you must certainly be in the habit of 
rouging : three earls, seven lords, three bishops, two 
generals (one of them Lord Wolseley), one admiral, 
four baronets, nine knights, a crowd of right honor- 
able and honorable ladies (many of them peeresses), 
and a mob of other personages, among whom I find 
Mr. Ho wells, Bret Harte, and myself. 

Perhaps we are disposed to smile at seeing so much 
made of titles ; but after what we have learned of Lord 
Timothy Dexter and the high-sounding names appro- 
priated by many of our own compatriots, who have 
no more claim to them than we plain Misters and 
Misseses, we may feel to them something as our late 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 275 

friend Mr. Appleton felt to the real green turtle soup 
set before him, when he said that it was almost as 
good as mock. 

The entertainment on this occasion was of the most 
varied character. The programme makes the follow- 
ing announcement : — 

Friday, 4 July, 18—. 

At 8 p. M. the Doors will Open. 

Mr. Haweis will receive his Friends. 

The Royal Handbell Ringers will Ring. 

The Fish-pond will be Fished. 

The Stalls will be Visited. 

The Phonograph will Utter. 
Refreshments will be called for, and they will come, — Tea, 
Coffee, and Cooling Drinks. Spirits will not be called for, — 
from the Vasty Deep or anywhere else, — nor would they come 
if they were. 

At 9.30 Mrs. Haweis will join the assembly. 

I am particularly delighted with this last feature in 
the preliminary announcement. It is a proof of the 
high regard in which the estimable and gifted lady 
who shares her husband's labors is held by the people 
of their congregation, and the friends who share in 
their feelings. It is such a master stroke of policy, 
too, to keep back the principal attraction until the 
guests must have grown eager for her appearance. I 
can well imagine how great a saving it must have 
been to the good lady's nerves, which were probably 
pretty well tried already by the fatigues and respon- 
sibilities of the busy evening. I have a right to say 
this, for I myself had the honor of attending a meet- 
ing at Mr. Haweis's house, where I was a principal 
guest, as I suppose, from the fact of the great number 
of persons who were presented to me. The minister 



276 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

must be very popular, for the meeting was a regular 
jam, — not quite so tremendous as that greater one, 
where but for the aid of Mr. Smalley, who kept open 
a breathing-space round us, my companion and myself 
thought we should have been asphyxiated. 

The company was interested, as some of my readers 
may be, to know what were the attractions offered to 
the visitors besides that of meeting the courteous en- 
tertainers and their distinguished guests. I cannot 
give these at length, for each part of the show is in-' 
troduced in the programme with apt quotations and 
pleasantries, which enlivened the catalogue. There 
were eleven stalls, " conducted on the cooperative 
principle of division of profits and interest ; they re- 
tain the profits, and you take a good deal of interest, 
we hope, in their success." 

Stall No. 1. Edisoniana, or the Phonograph. Alluded to by 
the Roman Poet as Vox, et prceterea nihil. 

Stall No. 2. Money-changing. 

Stall No. 3. Programmes and General Enquiries. 

Stall No. 4. Roses. 

A rose by any other name, etc. Get one. You 
can't expect to smell one without buying it, but 
you may buy one without smelling it. 

Stall No. 5. Lasenby Liberty Stall. 

(I cannot explain this. Probably articles from 
Liberty's famous establishment.) 

Stall No. 6. Historical Costumes and Ceramics. 
Stall No. 7. The Fish-pond. 
Stall No. 8. Varieties. 
Stall No. 9. Bookstall. 

(Books) " highly recommended for insomnia ; 

friends we never speak to, and always cut if we 

want to know them well." 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 277 

Stall No. 10. Icelandic. 

" Mrs. Magnusson, who is devoted to the North 
Pole and all its works, will thaw yonr sympa- 
thies, enlighten your minds," etc., etc. 

Stall No. 11. Call Office. 

All you buy may be left at the stalls, ticketed, 
A duplicate ticket will be handed to you on 
leaving. Present your duplicate at the Call 
Office. 

At 9.45, First Concert. 

At 10.45, An Address of Welcome by Rev. H. R-. Haweis. 

At 11 p. m., Bird-warbling Interlude by Miss Mabel Stephen- 
son, U. S. A. 

At 11.20, Second Concert. 

Notice ! 

Three Great Pictures. 

Lord Tennyson G. F. Watts, R. A. 

John Stuart Mill G. F. Watts, R. A. 

Joseph Garibaldi Sig. Rondi 

Notice ! 
A Famous Violin. 
A world-famed Stradivarius Violin, for which Mr. Hill, of 
Bond Street, gave £1000, etc., etc. 

Refreshments. 

Tickets for Tea, Coffee, Sandwiches, Iced Drinks, or Ices, 
Sixpence each, etc., etc. 

I hope my American reader is pleased and inter- 
ested by this glimpse of the way in which they do 
these things in London. 

There is something very pleasant about all this, but 
what specially strikes me is a curious flavor of city 
provincialism. There are little centres in the heart 
of great cities, just as there are small fresh-water 
ponds in great islands with the salt sea roaring all 
round them, and bays and creeks penetrating them 



278 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

as briny as the ocean itself. Irving has given a charm- 
ing picture of such a ^em-provincial centre in one of 
his papers in the Sketch-Book, — the one with the 
title " Little Britain." London is a nation of itself, 
and contains provinces, districts, foreign communities, 
villages, parishes, — innumerable lesser centres, with 
their own distinguishing characteristics, habits, pur- 
suits, languages, social laws, as much isolated from 
each other as if " mountains interposed " made the 
separation between them. One of these lesser centres 
is that over which my friend Mr. Haweis presides as 
spiritual director. Chelsea has been made famous as 
the home of many authors and artists, — above all, 
as the residence of Carlyle during the greater part of 
his life. Its population, like that of most respectable 
suburbs, must belong mainly to the kind of citizens 
which resembles in many ways the better class, — as 
we sometimes dare to call it, — of one of our thriving 
New England towns. How many John Gilpins there 
must be in this population, — citizens of " famous 
London town," but living with the simplicity of the 
inhabitants of our inland villages ! In the mighty 
metropolis where the wealth of the world displays it- 
self they practise their snug economies, enjoy their 
simple pleasures, and look upon ice-cream as a luxury, 
just as if they were living on the banks of the Con- 
necticut or the Housatonic, in regions where the sum- 
mer locusts of the great cities have not yet settled on 
the verdure of the native inhabitants. It is delight- 
ful to realize the fact that while the West End of 
London is flaunting its splendors and the East End 
in struggling with its miseries, these great middle- 
class communities are living as comfortable, unpre- 
tending lives as if they were in one of our thriving 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 279 

townships in the huckleberry districts. Human beings 
are wonderfully alike when they are placed in similar 
conditions. 

We were sitting together in a very quiet way over 
our teacups. The young Doctor, who was in the best 
of spirits, had been laughing and chatting with the 
two Annexes. The Tutor, who always sits next to 
Number Five of late, had been conversing with her in 
rather low tones. The rest of us had been soberly 
sipping our tea, and when the Doctor and the An- 
nexes stopped talking there was one of those dead 
silences which are sometimes so hard to break in 
upon, and so awkward while they last. All at once 
Number Seven exploded in a loud laugh, which star- 
tled everybody at the table. 

What is it that sets you laughing so ? said I. 

" I was thinking," Number Seven replied, " of what 
you said the other daj 7 of poetry being only the ashes 
of emotion. I believe that some people are disposed 
to dispute the proposition. I have been putting your 
doctrine to the test. In doing it I made some rhymes, 
— the first and only ones I ever made. I will sup- 
pose a case of very exciting emotion, and see whether 
it would probably take the form of poetry or prose. 
You are suddenly informed that your house is on fire, 
and have to scramble out of it, without stopping to tie 
your neckcloth neatly or to put a flower in your but= 
ton hole. Do you think a poet turning out in his 
night-dress, and looking on while the flames were 
swallowing his home and all its contents, would 
express himself in this style ? 

My house is on fire ! 
Bring me my lyre ! 
Like the names that rise heavenward my song shall aspire ! 



280 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

He would n't do any such thing, and you know he 
wouldn't. He would yell Fire! Fire! with all his 
might. Not much rhyming for him just yet! Wait 
until the fire is put out, and he has had time to look 
at the charred timbers and the ashes of his home, and 
in the course of a week he may possibly spin a few 
rhymes about it. Or suppose he was making an offer 
of his hand and heart, do you think he would declaim 
a versified proposal to his Amanda, or perhaps write 
an impromptu on the back of his hat while he knelt 
before her ? 

My beloved, to you 
I will always be true. 
Oh, pray make me happy, my love, do ! do ! do ! 

What would Amanda think of a suitor who courted 
her with a rhyming dictionary in his pocket to help 
him make love ? " 

You are right, said I, — there 's nothing in the 
world like rhymes to cool off a man's passion. You 
look afc a blacksmith working on a bit of iron or steel. 
Bright enough it looked while it was on the hearth, 
in the midst of the sea-coal, the great bellows blowing 
away, and the rod or the horse-shoe as red or as white 
as the burning coals. How it fizzes as it goes into 
the trough of water, and how suddenly all the glow 
is gone ! It looks black and cold enough now. Just 
so with your passionate incandescence. It is all well 
while it burns and scintillates in your emotional cen- 
tres, without articulate and connected expression ; but 
the minute you plunge it into the rhyme-trough it 
cools down, and becomes as dead and dull as the cold 
horse-shoe. It is true that if you lay it cold on the 
anvil and hammer away on it for a while it warms up 
somewhat. Just so with the rhyming fellow, — he 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 281 

pounds away on his verses and they warm up a little. 
But don't let him think that this afterglow of compo- 
sition is the same thing as the original passion. Thai 
found expression in a few oh, oil's, dt dt's, eheu, 
eheu's,helas, helas's, and when the passion had burned 
itself out you got the rhymed verses, which, as I have 
said, are its ashes. 

I thanked Number Seven for his poetical illustra- 
tion of my thesis. There is great good to be got out 
of a squinting brain, if one only knows how to profit 
by it. "We see only one side of the moon, you know, 
but a fellow with a squinting brain seems now and 
then to get a peep at the other side. I speak meta- 
phorically. He takes new and startling views of 
things we have always looked at in one particular 
aspect. There is a rule invariably to be observed 
with one of this class of intelligences : Never contra- 
diet a man with a squinting brain. I say a man, 
because I do not think that squinting brains are 
nearly so common in women as they are in men. The 
" eccentrics " are, I think, for the most part of the 
male sex. 

That leads me to say that persons with a strong 
instinctive tendency to contradiction are apt to be- 
come unprofitable companions. Our thoughts are 
plants that never flourish in inhospitable soils or chill- 
ing atmospheres. They are all started under glass, 
so to speak; that is, sheltered and fostered in our 
own warm and sunny consciousness. They must 
expect some rough treatment when we lift the sash 
from the frame and let the outside elements in upon 
them. They can bear the rain and the breezes, and 
be all the better for them ; but perpetual contradiction 
is a pelting hailstorm, which spoils their growth and 
tends to kill them out altogether. 



282 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

Now stop and consider a moment. Are not almost 
all brains a little wanting in bilateral symmetry ? Do 
you not find in persons whom you love, whom you 
esteem, and even admire, some marks of obliquity in 
mental vision ? Ai e there not some subjects in look- 
ing at which it seems to you impossible that they 
should ever see straight? Are there not moods in 
which it seems to you that they are disposed to see all 
things out of plumb and in false relations with each 
other ? If you answer these questions in the affirma- 
tive, then you will be glad of a hint as to the method 
of dealing with your friends who have a touch of cere- 
bral strabismus, or are liable to occasional paroxysms 
of perversity. Let them have their head. Get them 
talking on subjects that interest them. As a rule, 
nothing is more likely to serve this purpose than let- 
ting them talk about themselves; if authors, about 
their writings ; if artists, about their pictures or stat- 
ues ; and generally on whatever they have most pride 
in and think most of their own relations with. 

Perhaps you will not at first sight agree with me in 
thinking that slight mental obliquity is as common as 
I suppose. An analogy may have some influence on 
your belief in this matter. Will you take the trouble 
to ask your tailor how many persons have their two 
shoulders of the same height? I think he will tell 
you that the majority of his customers show a distinct 
difference of height on the two sides. Will you ask 
a portrait-painter how many of those who sit to hini 
have both sides of their faces exactly alike ? I be- 
lieve he will tell you that one side is always a little 
better than the other. What will your hatter say 
about the two sides of the head ? Do you see equally 
well with both eyes, and hear equally well with both 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 283 

ears ? Few persons past middle age will pretend that 
they do. Why should the two halves of a brain not 
show a natural difference, leading to confusion of 
thought, and very possibly to that instinct of contra- 
diction of which I was speaking? A great deal of 
time is lost in profitless conversation, and a good 
deal of ill temper frequently caused, by not consider- 
ing these organic and practically insuperable condi- 
tions. In dealing with them, acquiescence is the best 
of palliations and silence the sovereign specific. 

I have been the reporter, as you have seen, of my 
own conversation and that of the other Teacups. I 
have told some of the circumstances of their personal 
history, and interested, as I hope, here and there a 
reader in the fate of different members of our com- 
pany. Here are our pretty Delilah and our Doctor 
provided for. We may take it for granted that it will 
not be very long that the young couple will have to 
wait ; for, as I have told you all, the Doctor is cer- 
tainly getting into business, and bids fair to have a 
thriving practice before he saddles his nose with an 
eyeglass and begins to think of a pair of spectacles. 
So that part of our little domestic drama is over, and 
we can only wish the pair that is to be all manner 
of blessings consistent with a reasonable amount of 
health in the community on whose ailings must 
depend their prosperity. 

All our thoughts are now concentrated on the rela- 
tion existing betwen Number Five and the Tutor* 
That there is some profound instinctive impulse which 
is drawing them closer together no one who watches 
them can for a moment doubt. There are two prin- 
ciples of attraction which bring different natures to- 



284 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

gether : that in which the two natures closely resem- 
ble each other, and that in which one is complemen- 
tary of the other. In the first case, they coalesce, as 
do two drops of water or of mercury, and become in- 
timately blended as soon as they touch ; in the other, 
they rush together as an acid and an alkali unite, — 
predestined from eternity to find all they most needed 
in each other. What is the condition of things in the 
growing intimacy of Number Five and the Tutor? 
He is many years her junior, as we know. Both of 
them look that fact squarely in the face. The pre- 
sumption is against the union of two persons under 
these circumstances. Presumptions are strong obsta- 
cles against any result we wish to attain, but half our 
work in life is to overcome them. A great many re- 
sults look in the distance like six-foot walls, and when 
we get nearer prove to be only five-foot hurdles, to be 
leaped over or knocked down. Twenty years from 
now she may be a vigorous and active old woman, and 
he a middle-aged, half-worn-out invalid, like so many 
overworked scholars. Everything depends on the 
number of drops of the elixir vitas which Nature min- 
gled in the nourishment she administered to the em- 
bryo before it tasted its mother's milk. Think of 
Cleopatra, the bewitching old mischief-maker ; think 
of Ninon de L'Enclos, whose own son fell desperately 
in love with her, not knowing the relation in which 
she stood to him ; think of Dr. Johnson's friend, 
Mrs. Thrale, afterward Mrs. Piozzi, who at the age 
of eighty was full enough of life to be makipg love 
ardently and persistently to Conway, the handsome 
young actor. I can readily believe that Number Five 
will outlive the Tutor, even if he is fortunate enough 
to succeed in storming that Ehrenbreitstein, — say 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 285 

rather in winning his way into the fortress through 
gates that open to him of their own accord. If he 
fails in his siege, I do really believe he will die early ; 
not of a broken heart, exactly, but of a heart starved, 
with the food it was craving close to it, but unattain- 
able. I have, therefore, a deep interest in knowing 
how Number Five and the Tutor are getting along to- 
gether. Is there any danger of one or the other grow- 
ing tired of the intimacy, and becoming willing to get 
rid of it, like a garment which has shrunk and grown 
too tight ? Is it likely that some other attraction may 
come in to disturb the existing relation ? The prob- 
lem is to my mind not only interesting, but exception- 
ally curious. You remember the story of Cymon and 
Iphigenia as Dryden tells it. The poor youth has the 
capacity of loving, but it lies hidden in his undevel- 
oped nature. All at once he comes upon the sleeping 
beauty, and is awakened by her charms to a hitherto 
unfelt consciousness. With the advent of the new 
passion all his dormant faculties start into life, and 
the seeming simpleton becomes the bright and intelli- 
gent lover. The case of Number Five is as different 
from that of Cymon as it could well be. All her 
faculties are wide awake, but one emotional side 
of her nature has never been called into active exer- 
cise. Why has she never been in love with any one 
of her suitors ? Because she liked too many of them. 
Do you happen to remember a poem printed among 
these papers, entitled " I Like You and I Love You " ? 
No one of the poems which have been placed in the 
urn, - — that is, in the silver sugar-bowl, — has had any 
name attached to it ; but you could guess pretty nearly 
who was the author of some of them, certainly of the 
one just referred to. Number Five was attracted to 



286 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

the Tutor from the first time he spoke to her. She 
dreamed about him that night, and nothing idealizes 
and renders fascinating one in whom we have already 
an interest like dreaming of him or of her. Many a 
calm suitor has been made passionate by a dream ; 
many a passionate lover has been made wild and half 
beside himself by a dream ; and now and then an in= 
fatuated but hapless lover, waking from a dream of 
bliss to a cold reality of wretchedness, has helped him- 
self to eternity before he was summoned to the table. 

Since Number Five had dreamed about the Tutor, 
he had been more in her waking thoughts than she 
was willing to acknowledge. These thoughts were 
vague, it is true, — emotions, perhaps, rather than 
worded trains of ideas ; but she was conscious of a 
pleasing excitement as his name or his image floated 
across her consciousness ; she sometimes sighed as she 
looked over the last passage they had read from the 
same book, and sometimes when they were together 
they were silent too long, — too long ! What were 
they thinking of ? 

And so it was all as plain sailing for Number Five 
and the young Tutor as it had been for Delilah and 
the young Doctor, was it ? Do you think so ? Then 
you do not understand Number Five. Many a woman 
has as many atmospheric rings about her as the planet 
Saturn. Three are easily to be recognized. First, 
there is the wide ring of attraction which draws into 
itself all that once cross its outer border. These re- 
volve about her without ever coming any nearer. Next 
is the inner ring of attraction. Those who come within 
its irresistible influence are drawn so close that it 
seems as if they must become one with her sooner or 
later. But within this ring is another, — an atmos* 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 287 

pheric girdle, one of repulsion, which love, no matter 
how enterprising, no matter how prevailing or how in- 
sinuating, has never passed, and, if we judge of what 
is to be by what has been, never will. Perhaps Na° 
ture loved Number Five so well that she grudged her 
to any mortal man, and gave her this inner girdle of 
repulsion to guard her from all who would know her 
too nearly and love her too well. Sometimes two ves- 
sels at sea keep each other company for a long dis- 
tance, it may be during a whole voyage. Very pleas- 
ant it is to each to have a companion to exchange 
signals with from time to time ; to come near enough, 
when the winds are light, to hold converse in ordinary 
tones from deck to deck; to know that, in case of 
need, there is help at hand. It is good for them to be 
near each other, but not good to be too near. Woe is 
to them if they touch ! The wreck of one or both is 
likely to be the consequence. And so two well- 
equipped and heavily freighted natures may be the 
best of companions to each other, and yet must never 
attempt to come into closer union. Is this the 
condition of affairs between Number Five and the 
Tutor ? I hope not, for I want them to be joined to- 
gether in that dearest of intimacies, which, if founded 
in true affinity, is the nearest approach to happiness to 
be looked for in our mortal experience. We must 
wait. The Teacups will meet once more before the 
circle is broken, and we may, perhaps, find the solu- 
tion of the question we have raised. 

In the mean time, our young Doctor is playing 
truant oftener than ever. He has brought Avis, — if 
we must call her so, and not Delilah, — several times 
to take tea with us. It means something, in these 
days, to graduate from one of our first-class academies 



288 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

or collegiate schools. I shall never forget my first 
visit to one of these institutions. How much its pupils 
know, I said, which I was never taught, and have never 
learned ! I was fairly frightened to see what a teach- 
ing apparatus was provided for them. I should think 
the first thing to be done with most of the husbands 
they are likely to get would be to put them through 
a course of instruction. The young wives must find 
their lords wof ully ignorant, in a large proportion of 
cases. When the wife has educated the husband to 
such a point that she can invite him to work out a 
problem in the higher mathematics or to perform a 
difficult chemical analysis with her as his collaborator, 
as less instructed dames ask their husbands to play 
a game of checkers or backgammon, they can have 
delightful and instructive evenings together. I hope 
our young Doctor will take kindly to his wife's (that 
is to be) teachings. 

When the following verses were taken out of the 
urn, the Mistress asked me to hand the manuscript to 
the young Doctor to read. I noticed that he did not 
keep his eyes very closely fixed on the paper. It 
seemed as if he could have recited the lines without 
referring to the manuscript at all. 

AT THE TURN OF THE ROAD. 

The glory has passed from the goldenrod's plume, 
The purple-hued asters still linger in bloom ; 
The birch is bright yellow, the sumachs are red, 
The maples like torches aflame overhead. 

But what if the joy of the summer is past, 
And winter's wild herald is blowing his blast ? 
For me dull November is sweeter than May, 
For my love is its sunshine, — she meets me to-day ! 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 289 

Will she come ? Will the ring-dove return to her nest ? 
Will the needle swing back from the east or the west ? 
At the stroke of the hour she will be at her gate ; 
A friend may prove laggard, — love never comes late, 

Do I see her afar in the distance ? Not yet. 
Too early ! Too early ! She could not forget ! 
When I cross the old bridge where the brook overflowed^ 
She will flash full in sight at the turn of the road. 

I pass the low wall where the ivy entwines ; 

I tread the brown pathway that leads through the pines ; 

I haste by the boulder that lies in the field, 

Where her promise at parting was lovingly sealed. 

Will she come by the hillside or round through the wood c t 
Will she wear her brown dress or her mantle and hood ? 
The minute draws near, — but her watch may go wrong ; 
My heart will be asking, What keeps her so long ? 

Why doubt for a moment ? More shame if I do ! 
Why question ? Why tremble ? Are angels more true ? 
She would come to the lover who calls her his own 
Though she trod in the track of a whirling cyclone ! 

— I crossed the old bridge ere the minute had passed. 
I looked : lo ! my Love stood before me at last. 
Her eyes, how they sparkled, her cheeks, how they glowed, 
As we met, face to face, at the turn of the road ! 



XIL 

There was a great tinkling of teaspoons the other 
evening, when I took my seat at the table, where all 
The Teacups were gathered before my entrance. The 
whole company arose, and the Mistress, speaking for 
them, expressed the usual sentiment appropriate to 
such occasions. " Many happy returns " is the cus- 
tomary formula. No matter if the object of this kind 
wish is a centenarian, it is quite safe to assume that 
he is ready and very willing to accept as many more 
years as the disposing powers may see fit to allow 
him. 

The meaning of it all was that this was my birth- 
day. My friends, near and distant, had seen fit to 
remember it, and to let me know in various pleasant 
ways that they had not forgotten it. The tables were 
adorned with flowers. Gifts of pretty and pleasing 
objects were displayed on a side table. A great green 
wreath, which must have cost the parent oak a large 
fraction of its foliage, was an object of special admira- 
tion. Baskets of flowers which had half unpeopled 
greenhouses, large bouquets of roses, fragrant bunches 
of pinks, and many beautiful blossoms I am not bota- 
nist enough to name had been coming in upon me all 
day long. Many of these offerings were brought by 
the givers in person ; many came with notes as fra- 
grant with good wishes as the flowers they accompa* 
nied with their natural perfumes. 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 291 

How old was I, The Dictator, once known by 
another equally audacious title, — I, the recipient of 
all these favors and honors ? I had cleared the eight- 
barred gate, which few come in sight of, and fewer, 
far fewer, go over, a year before. I was a trespasser 
on the domain belonging to another generation. The 
children of my coevals were fast getting gray and 
bald, and their children beginning to look upon the 
world as belonging to them, and not to their sires and 
grandsires. After that leap over the tall barrier, it 
looks like a kind of impropriety to keep on as if one 
were still of a reasonable age. Sometimes it seems to 
me almost of the nature of a misdemeanor to be wan- 
dering about in the preserve which the fleshless game- 
keeper guards so jealously. But, on the other hand, 
I remember that men of science have maintained that 
the natural life of man is nearer fivescore than three- 
score years and ten. I always think of a familiar ex- 
perience which I bring from the French cafes, well 
known to me in my early manhood. One of the illus- 
trated papers of my Parisian days tells it pleasantly 
enough. 

A guest of the establishment is sitting at his little 
table. He has just had his coffee, and the waiter is 
serving him with his petit verve. Most of my readers 
know very well what a petit verve is, but there may 
be here and there a virtuous abstainer from alcoholic 
fluids, living among the bayberries and the sweet 
ferns, who is not aware that the words, as commonly 
used, signify a small glass — a very small glass — of 
spirit, commonly brandy, taken as a chasse-cqfe, or 
coffee-chaser. [This drinking of brandy, " neat," I 
may remark by the way, is not quite so bad as it 
looks. \Vkiskey or rum taken unmixed from a turn- 



292 Over the teacups. 

bier is a knock-down blow to temperance, but the little 
thimbleful of brandy, or Chartreuse, or Maraschino, is 
only, as it were, tweaking the nose of teetotalism.] 
Well, — to go back behind our brackets, — the guest 
is calling to the waiter, "Gargonf et le bain de 
pieds ! " Waiter ! and the foot-bath ! — The little 
glass stands in a small tin saucer or shallow dish,' and 
the custom is to more than fill the glass, so that some 
extra brandy runs over into this tin saucer or cup- 
plate, to the manifest gain of the consumer. 

Life is a petit verre of a very peculiar kind of 
spirit. At seventy years it used to be said that the 
little glass was full. We should be more apt to put 
it at eighty in our day, while Gladstone and Tennyson 
and our own Whittier are breathing, moving, think- 
ing, writing, speaking, in the green preserve belong- 
ing to their children and grandchildren, and Bancroft 
is keeping watch of the gamekeeper in the distance. 
But, returning resolutely to the petit verre, I am will- 
ing to concede that all after fourscore is the bain de 
pieds, — the slopping over, so to speak, of the full 
measure of life. I remember that one who was very 
near and dear to me, and who lived to a great age, so 
that the ten-barred gate of the century did not look 
very far off, would sometimes apologize in a very 
sweet, natural way for lingering so long to be a care 
and perhaps a burden to her children, themselves get- 
ting well into years. It is not hard to understand the 
feeling, never less called for than it was in the case of 
that beloved nonagenarian. I have known few per- 
sons, 3 7 oung or old, more sincerely and justly regretted 
than the gentle lady whose memory comes up before 
me as I write. 

Oh, if we could all go out of flower as gracefully, 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 293 

as pleasingly, as we come into blossom ! I always 
think of the morning-glory as the loveliest example of 
a graceful yielding to the inevitable. It is beautiful 
before its twisted corolla opens ; it is comely as it 
folds its petals inward, when its brief hours of perfec- 
tion are over. "Women find it easier than men to 
grow old in a becoming way. A very old lady who 
has kept something, it may be a great deal, of her 
youthful feelings, who is daintily cared for, who is 
grateful for the attentions bestowed upon her, and 
enters into the spirit of the young lives that surround 
her, is as precious to those who love her as a gem in 
an antique setting, the fashion of which has long gone 
by, but which leaves the jewel the color and bright- 
ness which are its inalienable qualities. With old 
men it is too often different. They do not belong so 
much indoors as women do. They have no pretty 
little manual occupations. The old lady knits or 
stitches so long as her eyes and fingers will let her. 
The old man smokes his pipe, but does not know what 
to do with his fingers, unless he plays upon some 
instrument, or has a mechanical turn which finds busi- 
ness for them. 

But the old writer, I said to The Teacups, as I say 
to you, my readers, labors under one special difficulty, 
which I am thinking of and exemplifying at this mo- 
ment. He is constantly tending to reflect upon and 
discourse about his own particular stage of life c He 
feels that he must apologize for his intrusion upon the 
time and thoughts of a generation which he naturally 
supposes must be tired of him, if they ever had any 
considerable regard for him. Now, if the world of 
readers hates anything it sees in print, it is apology. 
If what one has to say is worth saying, he need not 



294 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

beg pardon for saying it. If it is not worth saying — 
I will not finish the sentence. But it is so hard to 
resist the temptation, notwithstanding that the ter» 
rible line beginning " Superfluous lags the veteran ?? 
is always repeating itself in his dull ear ! 

What kind of audience or reading parish is a man 
who secured his constituency in middle life, or before 
that period, to expect when he has reached the age of 
threescore and twenty? His coevals have dropped 
away by scores and tens, and he sees only a few units 
scattered about here and there, like the few heads 
above the water after a ship has gone to pieces. 
Does he write and publish for those of his own time 
of life ? He need not print a large edition. Does he 
hope to secure a hearing from those who have come 
into the reading world since his coevals ? They have 
found fresher fields and greener pastures. Their 
interests are in the out-door, active world. Some of 
them are circumnavigating the planet while he is 
hitching his rocking-chair about his hearth-rug. Some 
are gazing upon the pyramids while he is staring at 
his andirons. Some are settling the tariff and fixing 
the laws of suffrage and taxation while he is dozing 
over the weather bulletin, and going to sleep over the 
obituaries in his morning or evening paper. 

Nature is wiser than we give her credit for being ; 
never wiser than in her dealings with the old. She 
has no idea of mortifying them by sudden and wholly 
unexpected failure of the chief servants of conscious- 
ness. The sight, for instance, begins to lose some- 
thing of its perfection long before its deficiency calls 
the owner's special attention to it. Very probably, 
the first hint we have of the change is that a friend 
makes the pleasing remark that we are " playing the 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 295 

trombone," as he calls it ; that is, moving a book we 
are holding backward and forward, to get the right 
focal distance. Or it may be we find fault with the 
lamp or the gas-burner for not giving so much light 
as it used to. At last, somewhere between forty and 
fifty, we begin to dangle a jaunty pair of eye-glasses, 
half plaything and half necessity. In due time a pair 
of sober, business-like spectacles bestrides the nose. 
Old age leaps upon it as his saddle, and rides triumph- 
ant, unchallenged, until the darkness comes which no 
glasses can penetrate. Nature is pitiless in carrying 
out the universal sentence, but very pitiful in her 
mode of dealing with the condemned on his way to 
the final scene. The man who is to be hanged always 
has a good breakfast provided for him. 

Do not think that the old look upon themselves as 
the helpless, hopeless, forlorn creatures which they 
seem to young people. Do these young folks suppose 
that all vanity dies out of the natures of old men and 
old women ? A dentist of olden time told me that a 
good-looking young man once said to him, " Keep that 
incisor presentable, if you can, till I am fifty, and then 
I sha'n't care how I look." I venture to say that that 
gentleman was as particular about his personal ap- 
pearance and as proud of his good looks at fifty, and 
many years after fifty, as he was in the twenties, when 
he made that speech to the dentist. 

My dear friends around the teacups, and at that 
wider board where I am now entertaining, or trying 
to entertain, my company, is it not as plain to you as 
it is to me that I had better leave such tasks as that 
which I am just finishing to those who live in a more 
interesting period of life than one which, in the order 
of nature, is next door to decrepitude ? Ought I not 



296 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

to regret having undertaken to report the doings and 
sayings of the members of the circle which you have 
known as The Teacups ? 

Dear, faithful reader, whose patient eyes have fol- 
lowed my reports through these long months, you and 
I are about parting company. Perhaps you are one 
of those who have known me under another name, in 
those far-off days separated from these by the red sea 
of the great national conflict. When you first heard 
the tinkle of the teaspoons, as the table was being 
made ready for its guests, you trembled for me, in the 
kindness of your hearts. I do not wonder that you 
did, — I trembled for myself. But I remembered the 
story of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, who was seen all of a 
tremor just as he was going into action. " How is 
this ? " said a brother officer to him. " Surely you 
are not afraid ? " " No," he answered, " but my 
flesh trembles at the thought of the dangers into 
which my intrepid spirit will carry me." 

I knew the risk of undertaking to carry through a 
series of connected papers. And yet I thought it was 
better to run that risk, more manly, more sensible, 
than to give way to the fears which made my flesh 
tremble as did Sir Cloudesley Shovel's. For myself 
the labor has been a distraction, and one which came 
at a time when it was needed. Sometimes, as in one 
of those poems recently published, — the reader will 
easily guess which, — the youthful spirit has come 
over me with such a rush that it made me feel just as 
I did when I wrote the history of the " One-hoss Shay " 
thirty years ago. To repeat one of my comparisons, 
it was as if an early fruit had ripened on a graft upon 
an old, steady-going tree, to the astonishment of all 
its later-maturing products. I should hardly dare to 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 297 

say so much as this if I had not heard a similar opin- 
ion expressed by others. 

Once committed to my undertaking, there was no 
turning back. It is true that I had said I might stop 
at any moment, but after one or two numbers it 
seemed as if there were an informal pledge to carry 
the series on, as in former cases, until I had completed 
my dozen instalments. 

Writers and speakers have their idiosyncrasies, 
their habits, their tricks, if you had rather call them 
so, as to their ways of writing and speaking. There 
is a very old and familiar story, accompanied by a 
feeble jest, which most of my readers may probably 
enough have met with in Joe Miller or elsewhere. It 
is that of a lawj^er who could never make an argu- 
ment without having a piece of thread to work upon 
with his fingers while he was pleading. Some one 
stole it from him one day, and he could not get on at 
all with his speech, — he had lost the thread of his 
discourse, as the story had it. Now this is what I 
myself once saw. It was at a meeting where certain 
grave matters were debated in an assembly of profes- 
sional men. A speaker, whom I never heard before 
or since, got up and made a long and forcible argu- 
ment. I do not think he was a lawyer, but he spoke 
as if he had been trained to talk to juries. He held 
a long string in one hand, which he drew through the 
other hand incessantly, as he spoke, just as a shoe- 
maker performs the motion of waxing his thread. He 
appeared to be dependent on this motion. The physi- 
ological significance of the fact I suppose to be that 
the flow of what we call the nervous current from the 
thinking centre to the organs of speech was rendered 



298 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

freer and easier by the establishment of a simulta- 
neous collateral nervous current to the set of muscles 
concerned in the action I have described. 

I do not use a string to help me write or speak, but 
I must have its equivalent. I must have my paper 
and pen or pencil before me to set my thoughts flow- 
ing in such form that they can be written continu- 
ously. There have been lawyers who could think out 
their whole argument in connected order without a 
single note. There are authors, — and I think there 
are many, — who can compose and finish off a poem 
or a story without writing a word of it until, when 
the proper time comes, they copy what they carry in 
their heads. I have been told that Sir Edwin Arnold 
thought out his beautiful "Light of Asia" in this 
way. 

I find the great charm of writing consists in its 
surprises. When one is in the receptive attitude of 
mind, the thoughts which are sprung upon him, the 
images which flash through his consciousness, are a 
delight, and an excitement. I am impatient of every 
hindrance in setting down my thoughts, — of a pen 
that will not write, of ink that will not flow, of paper 
that will not receive the ink. And here let me pay 
the tribute which I owe to one of the humblest but 
most serviceable of my assistants, especially in poet- 
ical composition. Nothing seems more prosaic than 
the stylographic pen. It deprives the handwriting of 
its beauty, and to some extent of its individual char- 
acter. The brutal communism of the letters it forms 
covers the page it fills with the most uniformly unin- 
teresting characters. But, abuse it as much as you 
choose, there is nothing like it for the poet, for the 
imaginative writer. Many a fine flow of thought has 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 299 

been checked, perhaps arrested, by the ill behavior of 
a goose-quill. Many an idea has escaped while the 
author was dipping his pen in the inkstand. But with 
the stylographic pen, in the hands of one who knows 
how to care for it and how to use it, unbroken rhythms 
and harmonious cadences are the natural products of 
the unimpeded flow of the fluid which is the vehicle 
of the author's thoughts and fancies. So much for 
my debt of gratitude to the humble stylographic pen. 
It does not furnish the proper medium for the corre- 
spondence of intimates, who wish to see as much of 
their friends' personality as their handwriting can 
hold. — still less for the impassioned interchange of 
sentiments between lovers : but in writing for the 
press its use is open to no objection. Its movement 
over the paper is like the flight of a swallow, while 
the quill pen and the steel pen and the gold pen are 
all taking short, laborious journeys, and stopping to 
drink every few minutes. 

A chief pleasure which the author of novels and 
stories experiences is that of becoming acquainted 
with the characters he draws. It is perfectly true 
that his characters must, in the nature of things, have 
more or less of himself in their composition. If I 
should seek an exemplification of this in the person of 
any of my Teacups, I should find it most readily in 
the one whom I have called Number Seven. — the one 
with the squinting brain. I think that not only I, the 
writer, but many of my readers, recognize in our own 
mental constitution an occasional obliquity of percep- 
tion, not always detected at the time, but plain enough 
when looked back upon. What extravagant fancies 
you and I have seriously entertained at one time or 
another ! What superstitious notions have got into 



300 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

our heads and taken possession of its empty chambers, 
— or, in the language of science, seized on the groups 
of nerve-cells in some of the idle cerebral convolu- 
tions ! 

The writer, I say, becomes acquainted with his 
characters as he goes on. They are at first mere em- 
bryos, outlines of distinct personalities. By and by< 
if they have any organic cohesion, they begin to assert 
themselves. They can say and do such and such 
things ; such and such other things they cannot and 
must not say or do. The story- writer's and play- 
writer's danger is that they will get their characters 
mixed, and make A say what B ought to have said. 
The stronger his imaginative faculty, the less liable 
will the writer be to this fault ; but not even Shakes- 
peare's power of throwing himself into his characters 
prevents many of his different personages from talk- 
ing philosophy in the same strain and in a style com- 
mon to them all. 

You will often observe that authors fall in love with 
'die imaginary persons they describe, and that they 
bestow affectionate epithets upon them which it may 
happen the reader does not consider in any way called 
for. This is a pleasure to which they have a right. 
Every author of a story is surrounded by a little 
family of ideal children, as dear to him, it may be, as 
are flesh-and-blood children to their parents. You 
may forget all about the circle of Teacups to which I 
have introduced you, — on the supposition that you 
have followed me with some degree of interest ; but 
do you suppose that Number Five does not continue 
as a presence with me, and that my pretty Delilah has 
left me forever because she is going to be married ? 
No, my dear friend, our circle will break apart, and 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 301 

its different members will soon be to you as if they 
bad never been. But do you think that I can forget 
them ? Do you suppose that I shall cease to follow 
the love (or the loves ; which do you think is the true 
word, the singular or the plural?) of Number Five 
and the young Tutor who is so constantly found in her 
company ? Do you suppose that I do not continue my 
relations with the " cracked Teacup, " — the poor old 
fellow with whom I have so much in common, whose 
counterpart, perhaps, you may find in your own com- 
plex personality ? 

I take from the top shelf of the hospital department 
of my library — the section devoted to literary cripples, 
imbeciles, failures, foolish rhymesters, and silly eccen- 
trics — one of the least conspicuous and most hope- 
lessly feeble of the weak-minded population of that 
intellectual almshouse. I open it and look through its 
pages. It is a story. I have looked into it once be- 
fore, — on its first reception as a gift from the author. 
I try to recall some of the names I see there : they 
mean nothing to me, but I venture to say the author 
cherishes them all, and cries over them as he did when 
he was writing their history. I put the book back 
among its dusty companions, and, sitting down in my 
reflective rocking-chair, think how others must forget, 
and how I shall remember, the company that gathered 
about this table. 

Shall I ever meet any one of them again, in these 
pages or in any other ? "Will the cracked Teacup hold 
together, or will he go to pieces, and find himself in 
that retreat where the owner of the terrible clock 
which drove him crazy is walking under the shelter of 
the high walls ? Has the young Doctor's crown yet 
received the seal which is Nature's warrant of wisdom 



302 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

and proof of professional competency ? And Number 
Five and her young friend the Tutor, — have they 
kept on in their dangerous intimacy ? Did they get 
through the tutto tremante passage, reading from the 
same old large edition of Dante which the Tutor 
recommended as the best, and in reading from which 
their heads were necessarily brought perilously near 
to each other ? 

It would be very pleasant if I could, consistently 
with the present state of affairs, bring these two young 
people together. I say two young people, for the one 
who counts most years seems to me to be really the 
younger of the pair. That Number Five foresaw from 
the first that any tenderer feeling than that of friend- 
ship would intrude itself between them I do not be- 
lieve. As for the Tutor, he soon found where he was 
drifting. It was his first experience in matters con- 
cerning the heart, and absorbed his whole nature as 
a thing of course. Did he tell her he loved her? 
Perhaps he did, fifty times ; perhaps he never had the 
courage to say so outright. But sometimes they looked 
each other straight in the eyes, and strange messages 
seemed to pass from one consciousness to the other. 
Will the Tutor ask Number Five to be his wife ; and 
if he does, will she yield to the dictates of nature, and 
lower the flag of that fortress so long thought impreg- 
nable ? Will he go on writing such poems to her as 
"The Eose and the Fern" or "I Like You and I 
Love Yon, " and be content with the pursuit of that 
which he never can attain ? That is all very well on 
the "Grecian Urn" of Keats, — beautiful, but not 
love such as mortals demand. Still, that may be all, 
for aught that we have yet seen. 



OVEK THE TEACUPS. 303 

* Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave 

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare ; 

Bold lover, never, never, canst thou kiss, 

Though winning near the goal, — yet do not grieve ; 

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, 

Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair ! 



•' More happy love ! more happy, happy love ! 
Forever warm, and still to be enjoyed, 
Forever panting and forever young ! " 

And so, good-bye, young people, whom we part with 
here. Shadows you have been and are to my readers ; 
very real you have been and are to me, — as real as 
the memories of many friends whom I shall see no 
more. 

As I am not in the habit of indulging in late sup- 
pers, the reader need not think that I shall spread 
another board and invite him to listen to the conver- 
sations which take place around it. If, from time to 
time, he finds a slight refection awaiting him on the 
sideboard, I hope he may welcome it as pleasantly as 
he has accepted what I have offered him from the 
board now just being cleared. 



It is a good rule for the actor who manages the 
popular street drama of Punch not to let the audience 
or spectators see his legs. It is very hard for the 
writer of papers like these, which are now coming to 
their conclusion, to keep his personality from showing 
itself too conspicuously through the thin disguises of 
his various characters. As the show is now over, as 
the curtain has fallen, I appear before it in my proper 
person, to address a few words to the friends who have 
assisted, as the French say, by their presence, and as 



304 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

we use the word, by the kind way in which they have 
received my attempts at their entertainment. 

This series of papers is the fourth of its kind which 
I have offered to my readers. I may be allowed to 
look back upon the succession of serial articles which 
was commenced more than thirty years ago, in 1857. 
" The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table " was the first 
of the series. It was begun without the least idea 
what was to be its course and its outcome. Its char- 
acters shaped themselves gradually as the manuscript 
grew under my hand. I jotted down on the sheet of 
blotting paper before me the thoughts and fancies 
which came into my head. A very odd-looking object 
was this page of memoranda. Many of the hints were 
worked up into formal shape, many were rejected. 
Sometimes I recorded a story, a jest, or a pun for con- 
sideration, and made use of it or let it alone as my 
second thought decided. I remember a curious coin- 
cidence, which, if I have ever told in print, — I am 
not sure whether I have or not, — I will tell over again. 
I mention it, not for the pun, which I rejected as not 
very edifying and perhaps not new, though I did not 
recollect having seen it. 

Mulier, Latin for woman ; why apply that name to 
one of the gentle but occasionally obstinate sex ? The 
answer was that a woman is (sometimes) more mulish 
than a mule. Please observe that I did not like the 
poor pun very well, and thought it rather rude and 
inelegant. So I left it on the blotter, where it was 
standing when one of the next numbers of " Punch " 
came out and contained that very same pun, which 
must have been hit upon by some English contributor 
at just about the same time I fell upon it on this 
side of the Atlantic. This fact may be added to the 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 305 

chapter of coincidences which belongs to the first 
number of this series of papers. 

The " Autocrat " had the attraction of novelty, which 
of course was wanting in the succeeding papers of 
similar character. The criticisms upon the successive 
numbers as they came out were various, but generally 
encouraging. Some were more than encouraging s 
very high-colored in their phrases of commendation* 
When the papers were brought together in a volume 
their success was beyond my expectations. Up to the 
present time the " Autocrat " has maintained its 
position. An immortality of a whole generation is 
more than most writers are entitled to expect. I ven- 
ture to think, from the letters I receive from the chil- 
dren and grandchildren of my first set of readers, that 
for some little time longer, at least, it will continue to 
be read, and even to be a favorite with some of its 
readers. Non omnis moriar is a pleasant thought to 
one who has loved his poor little planet, and will, I 
trust, retain kindly recollections of it through whatever 
wilderness of worlds he may be called to wander in his 
future pilgrimages. I say "poor little planet." Ever 
since I had a ten cent look at the transit of Venus, a 
few years ago, through the telescope in the Mall, the 
earth has been wholly different to me from what it 
used to be. I knew from books what a speck it is in 
the universe, but nothing ever brought the fact home 
like the sight of the sister planet sailing across the 
sun's disk, about large enough for a buckshot, not 
large enough for a full-sized bullet. Yes, I love the 
little globule where I have spent more than fourscore 
years, and I like to think that some of my thoughts 
and some of my emotions may live themselves over 
again when I am sleeping. I cannot thank all the 



306 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

kind readers of the " Autocrat " who are constantly 
sending me their acknowledgments. If they see this 
printed page, let them be assured that a writer is al= 
ways rendered happier by being told that he has made 
a fellow-being wiser or better, or even contributed to 
his harmless entertainment. This a correspondent 
may take for granted, even if his letter of grateful 
recognition receives no reply. It becomes more and 
more difficult for me to keep up with my correspond 
dents, and I must soon give it up as impossible. 

" The Professor at the Breakfast Table " followed 
immediately on the heels of the " Autocrat." The 
Professor was the alter ego of the first personage. In 
the earlier series he had played a secondary part, and 
in this second series no great effort was made to create 
a character wholly unlike the first. The Professor 
was more outspoken, however, on religious subjects, 
and brought down a good deal of hard language on 
himself and the author to whom he owed his existence. 
I suppose he may have used some irritating expres- 
sions, unconsciously, but not unconscientiously, I am 
sure. There is nothing harder to forgive than the 
sting of an epigram. Some of the old doctors, I fear, 
never pardoned me for saying that if a ship, loaded 
with an assorted cargo of the drugs which used to be 
considered the natural food of sick people, went to the 
bottom of the sea, it would be " all ihe better for man- 
kind and all the worse for the fishes." If I had not 
put that snapper on the end of my whip-lash, I might 
have got off without the ill temper which my antithe- 
sis provoked. Thirty years set that all right, and the 
same thirty years have so changed the theological at~ 
imosphere that such abusive words as " heretic " and 
** infidel," applied to persons who differ from the old 



OYER THE TEACUPS. 30? 

standards of faith, are chiefly interesting as a test of 
breeding, being seldom used by any people above the 
social half-caste line. I am speaking of Protestants ; 
how it may be among Eoman Catholics I do not know, 
but I suspect that with them also it is a good deal a 
matter of breeding. There were not wanting some 
who liked the Professor better than the Autocrat. I 
confess that I prefer my champagne in its first burst 
of gaseous enthusiasm : but if my guest likes it better 
after it has stood awhile, I am pleased to accommodate 
him. The first of my series came from my mind 
almost with an explosion, like the champagne cork ; 
it startled me a little to see what I had written, and 
to hear what people said about it. After that first 
explosion the flow was more sober, and I looked upon 
the product of my wine-press more coolly. Continua- 
tions almost always sag a little. I will not say that 
of my own second effort, but if others said it, I should 
not be disposed to wonder at or to dispute them. 

" The Poet at the Breakfast Table " came some 
years later. This series of papers was not so much a 
continuation as a resurrection. It was a doubly haz- 
ardous attempt, made without any extravagant expec- 
tations, and was received as well as I had any right 
to anticipate. It differed from the other two series in 
containing a poem of considerable length, published in 
successive portions. This poem holds a good deal of 
self-communing, and gave me the opportunity of ex- 
pressing some thoughts and feelings not to be found 
elsewhere in my writings. I had occasion to read the 
whole volume, not long shine, in preparation for a new 
edition, and was rather more pleased with it than I had 
expected to be. An old author is constantly rediscov- 
ing himself in the more or less fossilized productions 



308 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

of his earlier years. It is a long time since I have 
read the " Autocrat," but I take it up now and then 
and read in it for a few minutes, not always without 
some degree of edification. 

These three series of papers, " Autocrat," " Pro- 
fessor," " Poet," are all studies of life from somewhat 
different points of view. They are largely made up 
of sober reflections, and appeared to me to require 
some lively human interest to save them from weari- 
some didactic dulness. What could be more natural 
than that love should find its way among the young 
people who helped to make up the circle gathered 
around the table ? Nothing is older than the story of 
young love. Nothing is newer than that same old 
story. A bit of gilding here and there has a wonder- 
ful effect in enlivening a landscape or an apartment. 
Napoleon consoled the Parisians in their year of defeat 
by gilding the dome of the Invalides. Boston has 
glorified her State House and herself at the expense 
of a few sheets of gold leaf laid on the dome, which 
shines like a sun in the eyes of her citizens, and like a 
star in those of the approaching traveller. I think 
the gilding of a love-story helped all three of these 
earlier papers. The same need I felt in the series of 
papers just closed. The slight incident of Delilah's 
appearance and disappearance served my purpose to 
some extent. But what should I do with Number 
Five ? The reader must follow out her career for 
himself. For myself, I think that she and the Tutor 
have both utterly forgotten the difference of their 
years in the fascination of intimate intercourse. I do 
not believe that a nature so large, so rich in affection, 
as Number Five's is going to fall defeated of its best 
inheritance of life, like a vine which finds no support 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 809 

for its tendrils to twine around, and so creeps along 
the ground from which nature meant that love should 
lift it. I feel as if I ought to follow these two person- 
ages of my sermonizing story until they come together 
or separate, to fade, to wither, — perhaps to die, at 
last, of something like what the doctors call heart-fail* 
ure, but which might more truly be called heart-star- 
vation. When I say die, I do not mean necessarily 
the death that goes into the obituary column. It may 
come to that, in one or both ; but I think that, if they 
are never united, Number Five will outlive the Tutor, 
who will fall into melancholy ways, and pine and 
waste, while she lives along, feeling all the time that 
she has cheated herself of happiness. I hope that is 
not going to be their fortune, or misfortune. Vieille 
fille fait jenne mariee. What a youthful bride Num- 
ber Five would be, if she could only make up her 
mind to matrimony ! In the mean time she must be 
left with her lambs all around her. May heaven 
temper the winds to them, for they have been shorn 
very close, every one of them, of their golden fleece 
of aspirations and anticipations. 

I must avail myself of this opportunity to say a few 
words to my distant friends who take interest enough 
in my writings, early or recent, to wish to enter into 
communication with me by letter, or to keep up a 
communication already begun. I have given notice in 
print that the letters, books, and manuscripts which I 
receive by mail are so numerous that if I undertook 
to read and answer them all I should have little time 
for anything else. I have for some years depended 
on the assistance of a secretary, but our joint efforts 
have proved unable, of late, to keep down the accumu- 
lations which come in with every mail. So many of 



310 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

the letters I receive are of a pleasant character that it 
is hard to let them go unacknowledged. The extreme 
friendliness which pervades many of them gives them 
a value which I rate very highly. When large num- 
bers of strangers insist on claiming one as a friend, on 
the strength of what he has written, it tends to make 
him think of himself somewhat indulgently. It is the 
most natural thing in the world to want to give ex= 
pression to the feeling the loving messages from far- 
off unknown friends must excite. Many a day has 
had its best working hours broken into, spoiled for all 
literary work, by the labor of answering correspon- 
dents whose good opinion it is gratifying to have 
called forth, but who were unconsciously laying a new 
burden on shoulders already aching. I know too well 
that what I say will not reach the eyes of many who 
might possibly take a hint from it. Still I must 
keep repeating it before breaking oft' suddenly and 
leaving whole piles of letters unanswered. I have 
been very heavily handicapped for many years. It is 
partly my own fault. From what my correspondents 
tell me, I must infer that I have established a danger- 
ous reputation for willingness to answer all sorts of 
letters. They come with such insinuating humility, 
— they cannot bear to intrude upon my time, they 
know that I have a great many calls upon it, — and 
incontinently proceed to lay their additional weight on 
the load which is breaking my back. 

The hypocrisy of kind-hearted people is one of the 
most painful exhibitions of human weakness. It has 
occurred to me that it might be profitable to repro- 
duce some of my unwritten answers to correspondents. 
If those which were actually written and sent were 
to be printed in parallel columns with those mentally 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 311 

formed but not written out responses and comments, 
the reader would get some idea of the internal con- 
flicts an honest and not unamiable person has to go 
through, when he finds himself driven to the wall by 
a correspondence which is draining his vocabulary to 
find expressions that sound as agreeably, and signify 
as little, as the phrases used by a diplomatist in clos* 
ins: an official communication. 

No. 1. Want my autograph, do you ? And don't 
know how to spell my naixie ; An a for an e in my 
middle name. Leave out the I in my last name. Do 
you know how people hate to have their names mis- 
spelled? What do you suppose are the sentiments 
entertained by the Thompsons with a p towards those 
who address them in writing as Thomson ? 

No. 2. Think the lines you mention are by far the 
best I ever wrote, hey ? Well, I did n't write those 
lines. What is more, I think they are as detestable a 
string of rhymes as I could wish my worst enemy had 
written. A very pleasant frame of mind I am in for 
writing a letter, after reading yours ! 

No. 3. I am glad to hear that my namesake, whom 
I never saw and never expect to see, has cut another 
tooth ; but why write four pages on the strength of 
that domestic occurrence? 

No. 4. You wish to correct an error in my Broom- 
stick poem, do you? You give me to understand 
that Wilmington is not in Essex County, but in Mid 
dlesex. Very well; but are they separated by rurb* 
ning water f Because if they are not, what could 
hinder a witch from crossing the line that separates 
Wilmington from Andover, I should like to know? I 
never meant to imply that the witches made no excur- 
sions beyond the district which was more especially 
their seat of operations. 



312 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

As I come towards the end of this task which I had 
set myself, I wish, of course, that I could have per- 
formed it more to my own satisfaction and that of my 
readers. This is a feeling which almost every one 
must have at the conclusion of any work he has un- 
dertaken. A common and very simple reason for this 
disappointment is that most of us overrate our capac= 
ity. We expect more of ourselves than we have any 
right to, in virtue of our endowments. The figurative 
descriptions of the last Grand Assize must no more 
be taken literally than the golden crowns, which we 
do not expect or want to wear on our heads, or the 
golden harps, which we do not want or expect to hold 
in our hands. Is it not too true that many religious 
sectaries think of the last tribunal complacently, as 
the scene in which they are to have the satisfaction of 
saying to the believers of a creed different from their 
own, " I told you so " ? Are not others oppressed 
with the thought of the great returns which will be 
expected of them as the product of their great gifts, 
the very limited amount of which they do not suspect, 
and will be very glad to learn, even at the expense of 
their self-love, when they are called to their account ? 
If the ways of the Supreme Being are ever really to 
be "justified to men," to use Milton's expression, 
every human being may expect an exhaustive explana- 
tion of himself. No man is capable of being his own 
counsel, and I cannot help hoping that the ablest of 
the archangels will be retained for the defence of the 
worst of sinners. He himself is unconscious of the 
agencies which made him what he is. Self -determin- 
ing he may be, if you will, but who determines the 
self which is the proximate source of the determina- 
tion? Why was the A self like his good uncle in 



OVER THE TEACUPS. 313 

bodily aspect and mental and moral qualities, and the 
B self like the bad uncle in look and character? 
Has not a man a right to ask this question in the here 
or in the hereafter, — in this world or in any world 
in which he may find himself ? If the All wise wishes 
to satisfy his reasonable and reasoning creatures, it 
will not be by a display of elemental convulsions, bu'. 
by the still small voice, which treats with him as a de- 
pendent entitled to know the meaning of his exist- 
ence, and if there was anything wrong in his adjust- 
ment to the moral and spiritual conditions of the 
world around him to have full allowance made for it. 
No melodramatic display of warring elements, such as 
the white-robed Second Adventist imagines, can meet 
the need of the human heart. The thunders and 
lightnings of Sinai terrified and impressed the more 
timid souls of the idolatrous and rebellious caravan 
which the great leader was conducting, but a far no- 
bler manifestation of divinity was that when " the 
Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speak- 
eth unto his friend." 

I find the burden and restrictions of rhyme more 
and more troublesome as I grow older. There are 
times when it seems natural enough to employ that 
form of expression, but it is only occasionally; and 
the use of it as the vehicle of the commonplace is so 
prevalent that one is not much tempted to select it as 
the medium for his thoughts and emotions. The art 
of rhyming has almost become a part of a high-school 
education, and its practice is far from being an evi~ 
dence of intellectual distinction. Mediocrity is as 
much forbidden to the poet in our days as it was in 
those of Horace, and the immense majority of the 
verses written are stamped with hopeless mediocrity. 



314 OVER THE TEACUPS. 

When one of the ancient poets found he was trying 
to grind out verses which came unwillingly, he said 
he was writing 

INVITA MINERVA. 

Vex not the Muse with idle prayers, — 

She will not hear thy call ; 
She steals upon thee unawares, 

Or seeks thee not at all. 

Soft as the moonbeams when they sought 

Endym ion's fragrant bower, 
She parts the whispering leaves of thought 

To show her full-blown flower. 

For thee her wooing hour has passed, 

The singing birds have flown, 
And winter comes with icy blast 

To chill thy buds unblown. 

Yet, though the woods no longer thrill 

As once their arches rung, 
Sweet echoes hover round thee still 

Of songs thy summer sung. 

Live in thy past ; await no more 

The rush of heaven-sent wings ; 
Earth still has music left in store 

While Memory sighs and sings. 

1 hope my special Minerva may not always he un- 
willing, but she must not be called upon as she has 
been in times past. Now that the teacups have left 
the table, an occasional evening call is all that my 
readers must look for. Thanking them for their kind 
companionship, and hoping that I may yet meet them 
in the now and thens of the future, I bid them good- 
bye for the immediate present. 



INDEX. 



Ability, superior, and long life, 28. 

Achilles, little better than a Choctaw 
brave, 74. 

Affections, sprinkled or poured out, 21S. 

Affinities, not to be settled by the al- 
manac, 263. 

After the Curfew, 69. 

Alcoholic stimulants, 184. 

Alexander the Great, 74. 

Allen, Ethan, 186. 

American girl, The, 52, 8?, 104, 122, 176, 
200, 201, 2G6. 

American literature, certain tendencies 
of, 110. 

Angel, an, with a cloud for a handker- 
chief, 99. 

Angel, the recording, destroys old rec- 
ord-books, 48. 

Annexes, the two, 52, 83, 99, 104, 113, 
119, 120, 122, 143, 174, 200, 201, 224, 
225, 241, 242, 244, 262-265, 271, 279. 

Apology, an, hateful to the world of 
readers, 293. 

Appleton, Mr., on green turtle soup, 
275. 

Arch, beauty and endurance of the. 211, 
212. 

Archangel, an, can smile, 60. 

Aristocracy, hard-handed, 218. 

Arnold, Sir Edwin, 298. 

" Ars Poetica," the, modernized, 88,90. 

Ases and the Ifs, the, 121, 122. 

Assize, the last Grand, 313. 

At the Pantomime, 198. 

At the Turn of the Road, 288. 

Atmospheric rings, a woman's, 286. 

Author, the, and his characters, 299, 300. 

Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, The, 
304. 

Avis, the Delilah of The Teacups, 201, 
268, 269, 271, 287. 

Babel, the new Tower of, 104. 

Backbones, cartilaginous, 121. 

Bachelder, Rev. Stephen, 37. 

Bacon's Essays, at fifty guineas a sheet, 8. 

Balzac's Peau de Chagrin, 72. 

Barzillai, poor old, 26. 

Beliefs, men's sterner, apt to soften in 
their later years, 39. 

Bethesda, the pool of, stirred by an au- 
thor, 10. 

Bigelow, George Tyler, 29. 



Birthday, The Dictator's, 290 et seq. 
Black drop, nature's, 30, 39. 
Book-tasting, 151, 157. 
Bore, a peculiarity of the, 83. 
Boston Natural History Society, 16. 
Brain, like a tinder-box, a, 14 ; action 

through space, 15 ; squinting, 96, 99, 

111, 114, 115, 162, 166, 204, 281, 282; 

wanting in bilateral symmetry, 282, 

283. 
Brain-tappers, 12, 179 et seq. 
Briggs, Richard, 163. 
Broomstick Train, The, 226, 312. 
Brownell, Henry Howard, 153. 
Browning, Robert, 41 ; " A Grammarian's 

Funeral," 133, 175. 
Bruno, Giordano, 163. 
Bryant, William Cullen, 41, 247, 248. 
Burns, Robert, 253. 
Byron, Lord, 49. 

Cabalistic sentence, the, 164. 

Cacoethes Scribendi, 93. 

Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, brags 

about himself, 25. 
Calhoun, J. C.,45. 
Cannibals, literary, 23. 
Carlyle, his picture of an editor, 10; 

smoking with his mother, 33. 
Celebrations, American and English, 272 

et seq. 
Cerebral induction, a typical example of, 

15. 
Cerebricity, stored, 15. 
Chelsea, England, 278. 
Chevreul, Michel Eugene, 27. 
Christian heathenism, 250. 
Christian sects should be polite to each 

other, 196. 
Circe, a, who turns her victims into 

lambs, 217, 238. 
Citizen, a good enough term for any= 

body, 222. 
Clarke, James Freeman, 28, 29, 34, 68, 

196. 
Class of 1829 at Harvard College, the, 28. 
Cleveland, ' Father," 26. 
Climacteric, the grand, 30. 
Clock, The Terrible, 169. 
Coffee, the morning cup of, more exhil- 
arating than the evening cup of tea, 6. 
Coincidence, curious cases of, 13. 18, 19 

304. 



316 



INDEX, 



Commencements, and other celebrations, 

272 et seq. 
Conditions, men largely shaped by, 40. 
Consciousness, one latch-key of, fits 

many doors, 10. 
Contradiction, perpetual, a pelting hail- 
storm, 281. 
Conversazione and f£te, in the parish of 

St. James, Marylebone, 274 et seq. 
" Corner Bookstore," the famous, 150. 
Correspondence, The Dictator's, 136 et 

seq., 306, 309 et seq. 
Counsellor, The, 51, 68, 79, 91-93, 99, 

120, 122-124, 190, 192, 217, 240, 241, 

243, 261. 
Coupon bonds, 72, 73. 
Covvper, William, 253. 
" Crank," what is a? 161. 
Creed, growing out of a narrow, 247 ; 

the Athanasian, 258. 
Critics, swarm like bacteria, 23. 
Curtis, Benjamin Bobbins, 28. 
Cymon and Iphigenia, 285. 

David, King, badly off at the age of 
seventy, 26. 

Davis, George T., 29. 

Decade, every, a defence of the next, 36. 

Delilah, the handmaiden, 61, 143, 154, 
159, 160, 162, 174, 199-202, 224-226, 241, 
262, 265, 268, 270, 283, 287, 300, 308. 

De Morgan, Augustus, 161 et seq., 203. 

Dentist's chair, new horrors associated 
with, 17, 

Dexter, Lord Timothy, 231 et seq. 

Dictator, The, 24, 45, 51, 60, 72, 92, 117, 
134, 146, 147, 176, 177, 181, 205, 244 et 
passim. 

Disease, advantage of having a mortal, 
183 ; as to curing, 189. 

Doctor, the young, 51, 67, 119, 121, 123, 
124, 128, 131, 168, 217, 224-226, 240, 
241, 261, 264, 265, 267, 269-271, 279, 
283, 287, 288, 301. 

Dramatis personse, the usefulness of, 53. 

Drawing, ingenious system for teaching, 
82. 

Dream, Number Five's, 56. 

Dreaming idealizes and renders fasci- 
nating, 286. 

Dying, the business of, 250. 

Dyspepsia, mental, 148. 

Edwards, Jonathan, 40, 249, 252. 
Egotist, the great original American, 232. 
Electricity, force stripped stark naked, 

215. 
Elms, a useful lesson or, 38. 
Emerson, Balph Waldo, 38, 195, 233. 
English girl, the young, 14, 52, 83, 104, 

130, 175, 176, 266, 273. 
Epigram, nothing harder than to forgive 

the sting of an, 306. 
Eternal punishment, 244 et seq. 
" Evenings at Home," 206, 207. 
Everett, Edward, quotes the iEneid, 9. 
Evil words, man's vocabulary terribly 

retentive of, 109. 



Evolution, the doctrine of, 255. 

" Exhibition," an, at a young ladies' 

school, 263 et seq. 
" Eyes and No Eyes," 206, 207. 

Fall of man, doctrine of the, 252. 
Family doctor, not extinct, 124. 
Famous, how to be, 86. 
Flaubert, M., 106 et seq. 
Foundlings, planetary, 40, 54, 55. 
Fourscore, the Mont Blanc of, 27. 
Freeman, Bev. James, 196. 

'* Gaspings for Immortality," 88. 

Gilpin, Daddy, 273. 

Golden rule, the, in dealing with unbe- 
lievers, 197. 

Good-bye, The Dictator's, 314. 

Graduates, from the academy of love, 
243. 

Growing old, women do it in a becom- 
ing way, 293. 

Habit, everything depends on, 27. 

Hadrian, Emperor, 45. 

Hale, Edward Everett, ingenious, inven- 
tive, and inexhaustible, 9. 

Halleck, Fitz Greene, 41. 

Hastings, Henry, 27. 

Haweis, Bev. H. B., 273 et seq. 

Health, how to preserve, 186 ; the curve 
of, 187, 188. 

Heart-starvation, 309. 

Holyoke, Dr., of Salem, 26, 184. 

Homer, 74, 75. 

Homo caudatus, 155. 

Horace, 157, 158. 

Hospital department of a library, 301. 

Humane Society, a, in heaven, 257. ' 

Hypocrisy of kind-hearted people, the, 
310. 

Hysteric girl, a, who thought herself a 
born poetess, 240. 

Idiot, the prize, 112. 

Idiotic area in the human mind, an, 12, 

166. 
7/s and the Ases, the, 121, 122. 
I Like you and I Love you, 144. 
I-My-Self & Co., 166. 
Ik Marvel, 133. 
Independence, American literary, 233 

et seq. 
Invita Minerva, 314. 
Iphigenia and Cymon, 285. 
Irving, Washington, 278. 
Isopodic societies, 64. 

James, William, 166. 
Jefferson, Thomas, 233. 
Jenkins, Henry, 26. 
Jews, prejudice against, 193 el seq. 
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, carried to Her 
Majesty Queen Anne, 205. 

Keats, his " Grecian Urn," 302. 

Keller, Helen, 140 et seq. 

Kindness, pitying, a bitter sweet, 191. 



INDEX. 



317 



" Kirby's Wonderful Museum," 17. 
Knights of Labor, two unfortunate, 219 
et seq. 

Lachapelle, Madame, 131. 

La Maison d'Or, 172. 

Latch-key of consciousness, the, 10. 

Life, natural to cling to, 35; yet some 
persons get more of it than they want, 
35 ; a game of chess, not solitaire or 
checkers, 66 ; petit verre, 292. 

Lines to a Pretty Little Maid of Mam- 
ma's, 154. 

Literary independence, American, 233, 
et seq. 

Long life, cases of : Moses, Caleb, Henry 
Jenkins, Thomas Parr, Dr. Holyoke, 
Father Cleveland, Colonel Perkins, 
Lord Lyndhurst, Josiah Quinc}-, Sid- 
ney Bartlett, Ranke, Chevreul, Henry 
Hastings, Benjamin Peirce, James 
Freeman Clarke, B. R. Curtis, George 
T. Bigelow, George T. Davis, 25-29; 
Gladstone, 33 ; Metastasio, Bryant, 
Longfellow, Halleck, Whittier, Tenny- 
son, Browning, 41 ; Madame Saqui, 42 ; 
Theophrastus, 190 ; Mrs. Thrale, 284 ; 
Bancroft, 292. 

Longevity, prescriptions for, 182 et seq. 

Longfellow, Fenry Wadsworth, 40, 41. 

Louis Philipue, 223. 

Louis XIV./168, 169. 

Love, the flower of young, 147; or 
loves? 301. 

Lover's vocabulary, the, 91. 

Lunites, the, 59, 60. 

Lyndhurst, Lord, 27. 

Mall, the telescope in the, 305. 

Mask, a, of no advantage to a writer, 20. 

Mason, Dr. John M., 196. 

Me-Number-One and Me-Number-Two, 
154, 155. 

Metallic taste of articles written at so 
many guineas a sheet, 8. 

Metastasio, 41. 

Miracles we have witnessed, 31, 32. 

Mis-spelling of their names, very hate- 
ful to people, 311. 

Mistress, The, 45, 50, 54, 56, 74, 84, 120, 
201, 216, 224, 256, 264-269, 290. 

Mitchell, Donald Grant, 133. 

Mitchell, "Weir, an expression borrowed 
from, 28 ; his treatment of nervous 
exhaustion, 184. 

Mont Blanc of fourscore, the, 27. 

Montefiore, Sir Moses, 199. 

Monuments which are a perpetual eye- 
sore, 104, 105. 

Morhof, the essays of, 160. 

Morley, John, on eternal punishment, 
253., 

Moses, in remarkably good condition for 
a man of Ms age, 25. 

Mother's influence, a, 247. 

Mnlier, a pun on, 304. 

Music, the unfathomable mysteries of, 
95 ; can be translated only by music, 



98 ; the Volapuk of spiritual being: 

99. 
Music-baths, good for the soul, 97. 
Musician, The, 52, 243, 265, 267. 

Nahum, a prophecy of, 216. 

National Hymn, our, 29. 

Nature, her black drop, 30, 39 ; as i 
nurse, 55 ; supplied the models foi 
pyramid and obelisk, 1C1 ; deals wise- 
ly with the old, 294 ; pitiless, yet piti- 
ful, 295. 

Niagara, a giant's tongue, 214. 

Nile, when The Dictator expects to visit 
the, 100. 

Nobility, certain titles of, 219, 222. 

Number Five, 48, 50, 51, 53, 55, 56, 61, 
66-68, 70, 78, 81, 82, 86, 87, 90, 96, 97, 
99, 100, 111, 113, 119, 121, 131, 143, 144, 
146, 155, 167, 168, 174-179, 199, 202, 
216, 217, 238-247, 257, 258, 261-263, 
265, 266, 268, 279, 283-287, 300-302, 
308 309 

Number Seven, 14, 48, 53, 68, 75, 79, 81, 
82, 89, 94-96, 99, 111-114, 117, 120, 
146, 155, 161, 163, 203 et seq., 217, 
226, 237, 258, 265, 267, 279, 281, 299, 
301. 

Oatmeal or pie ? 185, 186. 

Obituary notice of himself, The Dic- 
tator reads an, 135. 

" Occasional " poems, 270. 

Octogenarian, how to become an, 181 
et seq. 

Old age, cheerful, 33 ; the great priv- 
ilege of, 34 ; habits are its crutches, 
37 ; like an opium-dream, 39 ; reli- 
gious attitude of, 45 ; Wordsworth's 
picture of, in " Matthew," 48; tender 
melancholy of, 192 ; a pair of specta- 
cles his saddle, 295. 

" Old Blue," 31. 

Orthobrachians, the, 64. 

Over-Feeding, Intellectual, 148. 

Parasite, a murderous South American, 

92. 
Parr, Thomas, 26. 
Parricide, moral, 248. 
Patch, Mr. Samuel, 156. 
Peau de Chagrin of State Street, the 3 

73. 
Peirce, Professor Benjamin, 28. 
Pens (quill, steel, and gold) drink too 

often, 299. 
Perkins, Colonel, of Connecticut, 26. 
Perversity, occasional paroxysms of, 

282. 
Petit verre, the, 291, 292. 
Phi Beta Kappa Society, dinners of the, 

9 ; Emerson's oration before, 233. 
Phillips, Grenville Tudor, 18. 
Pindar, his^des were occasional poems, 

270. 
Plagiarism, conscious, 153. 
Poet, a, would not make rhymes while 

his house was burning, 279 ; nor de- 



318 



INDEX. 



claim a versified proposal to his 
Amanda, 280. 

Poet at the Breakfast Table, The, 307 et 
seq. 

Poetry, a matter of heart-beats, 41 ; as 
contagious as measles, 50 ; attenuated 
volumes of, 76 ; everybody can learn 
to make, 77 ; " taught in twelve les- 
sons," 78 ; a Primer of, for the pupils 
of the Idiot Asylum, 80, 81 ; manufac- 
ture of, 84 ; the ashes of emotion, 279. 

Poets not particularly short-lived, 40, 
41. 

" Potter, the ventriloquist," 77. 

Press, the great gland of the civilized i 
organism, 148; one cannot keep up 
with the, 151. 

Presumptions, half our work in life is to 
overcome, 284. 

Priestley, Dr., 155. 

Professor at the Breakfast Table, The, 
306 et seq. 

Professor, The, 24, 50, :5, 56, 61, 67, 74, 
89, 92, 94, 95, 98, 111, 113, 119, 143, 
144, 167, 200, 201, 217, 265, 267. 

Pulpit and pews, relation of, 248. 

Punishment, future, 245 et seq. 

Purgatory, doctrine of, among New Eng- 
land Protestants, 244. 

Pyramid and obelisk, eternal types, 101. 

Pyx, a quartz, 164, 165. 

Quaritch, Bernard, 115 et seq. 
Quincy, Josiah, 27. 

Ranke, Leopold, 27. 

Rathbone, Fred., 13 et seq. 

Reading, as to a course of, 149 et seq. 

Realism, 105 et seq. 

Realists, the great mistake of the, 109. 

Repeating, liability of, on the part of a 

writer, 8 ; propriety of, 9. 
Rhymes are iron fetters, 79 ; cool off a 

man's passion, 280. 
Rhythm is a tether, 79. 
Rogers, Samuel, 264, 270. 
Rose and the Fern, The, 118. 
Royce, Professor, 16, 17. 

Saqui, Madame, 42. 

Saturn, the atmosphere of, 61 ; metals 
found on, 62 ; the great industrial 
product of, 63 ; no looking-glasses in, 
64 ; life dull in, 65 ; dislocation of the 
lower jaw common in, 65. 

Saturnians, the, 62-64. 

Scribblers feed on each other, 24. 

Seventh son of a seventh son, 205. 

Shaftesbury, Earl of, his description of 
Henry Hastings, 27. 

Shovel, Sir Cloudesley, 296. 

Silliman, Professor, 16. 

Sismondi, 253. 

Smalley, Mr., renders valuable aid, 276. 

Spagnoletto, a revolting picture by, 107. 

Specialists, medical, 125 et seq. 

Squinting brains, 96, 99, 111, 114, 115, 
162, 166, 204, 281, 282. 



Stone-cutter, Number Seven's respect for 

a, 215. 
Struldbrugs, the, 36. 
Stylographic pen, prosaic but useful, 

298, 299. 
Sugar-bowl, the poetical, 75, 93, 117, 

119, 285. 
Swift, Dean, 109. 
Symptoms, the cultivation of, 187. 

Tail, a giant's, 154, 155. 

Tartarus, 259. 

Tartarus, the Christian, 254. 

Teacups do not hold so much as coffee- 
cups, 21. 

Tears, Old Men's, 30. 

Teetotalism, tweaking the nose of, 292. 

Telescope in the Mall, the, 305. 

Tennyson, Lord, 41. 

Theophrastus, 190. 

Thomas, Edith, 206. 

Thornton, Abraham, 13. 

Thought, a fine flow of, checked by a 
goose-quill, 299. 

Thoughts, attrition of, 11. 

Thread, of a discourse, lost, 297. 

Threshing old straw, 10. 

Time, threatens with the sand bag, 30. 

Titles of distinction, American appetite 
for, 222, 231. 

To the Eleven Ladies, 43. 

Tobacco, often harmful, 184. 

Too Young for Love, 202. 

Toothaches, telepathic, possible exist- 
ence of, 17. 

Trees, the real, live underground, 212 ; 
their tails, 213. 

" Trombone, playing the," with a book, 
295. 

Tutor, The, 49, 50, 90, 99, 100, 119, 174, 
175, 177, 179, 217, 241-244, 262, 263, 
265-267, 279, 283-287, 301, 302, 308, 
309. 

Urn, the, in which The Teacups put 
their unsigned poems, 75, 93, 117, 119, 
285. 

Vanity does not die out of the old, 295. 
Viper, a, not so bad as a child, 249. 
Vocabulary, stirring up a writer's un- 

sanctified, 8 ; the lover's, 91. 
Voices, the quality of, 178. 

Wagon, an old broken-down, 208 et seq. 

Walker, James, 34. 

Warming-pans, useful in the West In- 
dies, 231. 

Washington monument, the, 102, 103. 

Washington pie, 1S6. 

Well-sweep, the old-fashioned, 207, 208. 

Wheel, an extraordinary product of 
genius and skill, 208 et seq. 

Whewell, Dr., 164. 

Whitman, Mr., 234, 235. 

Whittier, John Greenleaf, 41. 

Wife, preferred at the piano rather than 
at the dissecting-table, 225. 



INDEX. 



319 



Willis, N. P., 147. 

Women, as book-tasters, 157. 

Writing by the yard, 8. 

Young, Parson, 49. 

Young America, let him roll ! 238. 

Young days, boasting about, 32. 



Young people prefer the thoughts and 
language of their own generation, 7. 

Youthful womanhood, a garden-bed of, 
267. 

Zaehdarm, Philippus, 27. 
Zola, M., 107 et seq. 



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